estimates of the divine purpose anywhere to be found. But Moore might,
like Mr. Midshipman Easy, have excused himself by remarking, "Ah! well,
I don't understand these things." The miscellaneous division of Ballads,
Songs, etc., is much more fruitful. "The Leaf and the Fountain,"
beginning "Tell me, kind seer, I pray thee," though rather long, is
singularly good of its kind--the kind of half-narrative ballad. So in a
lighter strain is "The Indian Bark." Nor is Moore less at home after his
own fashion in the songs from the Anthology. It is true that the same
fault which has been found with his Anacreon may be found here, and that
it is all the more sensible because at least in some cases the originals
are much higher poetry than the pseudo-Teian. To the form and style of
Meleager Moore could not pretend; but as these are rather songs on Greek
motives than translations from the Greek, the slackness and dilution
matter less. But the strictly miscellaneous division holds some of the
best work. We could no doubt dispense with the well-known ditty (for
once very nearly the "rubbish" with which Moore is so often and so
unjustly charged) where Posada rhymes of necessity to Granada, and
where, quite against the author's habit, the ridiculous term "Sultana"
is fished out to do similar duty in reference to the Dulcinea, or rather
to the Maritornes, of a muleteer. But this is quite an exception, and as
a rule the facile verse is as felicitous as it is facile. Perhaps no one
stands out very far above the rest; perhaps all have more or less the
mark of easy variations on a few well-known themes. The old comparison
that they are as numerous as motes, as bright, as fleeting, and as
individually insignificant, comes naturally enough to the mind. But then
they are very numerous, they are very bright, and if they are fleeting,
their number provides plenty more to take the place of that which passes
away. Nor is it by any means true that they lack individual
significance.
This enumeration of a few out of many ornaments of Moore's muse will of
course irritate those who object to the "brick-of-the-house" mode of
criticism; while it may not be minute enough, or sufficiently bolstered
by actual quotation, to please those who hold that simple extract is the
best, if not the only tolerable form of criticism. But the critic is not
alone in finding that, whether he carry his ass or ride upon it, he
cannot please all his public. What has been said is probably enough, in
the case of a writer whose work, though as a whole rather unjustly
forgotten, survives in parts more securely even than the work of greater
men, to remind readers of at least the outlines and bases of his claim
to esteem. And the more those outlines are followed up, and the
structure founded on those bases is examined, the more certain, I think,
is Moore of recovering, not the position which M. Vallat would assign to
him of the greatest lyrist of England (a position which he never held
and never could hold except with very prejudiced or very incompetent
judges), not that of the equal of Scott or Byron or Shelley or
Wordsworth, but still a position high enough and singularly isolated at
its height. Viewed from the point of strictly poetical criticism, he no
doubt ranks only with those poets who have expressed easily and
acceptably the likings and passions and thoughts and fancies of the
average man, and who have expressed these with no extraordinary cunning
or witchery. To go further in limitation, the average man, of whom he is
thus the bard, is a rather sophisticated average man, without very deep
thoughts or feelings, without a very fertile or fresh imagination or
fancy, with even a touch--a little touch--of cant and "gush" and other
defects incident to average and sophisticated humanity. But this
humanity is at any time and every time no small portion of humanity at
large, and it is to Moore's credit that he sings its feelings and its
thoughts so as always to get the human and durable element in them
visible and audible through the "trappings of convention." Again, he has
that all-saving touch of humour which enables him, sentimentalist as he
is, to be an admirable comedian as well. Yet again, he has at least
something of the two qualities which one must demand of a poet who is a
poet, and not a mere maker of rhymes. His note of feeling, if not full
or deep, is true and real. His faculty of expression is not only
considerable, but it is also distinguished; it is a faculty which in the
same measure and degree nobody else has possessed. On one side he had
the gift of singing those admirable songs of which we have been talking.
On the other, he had the gift of right satiric verse to a degree which
only three others of the great dead men of this century in
England--Canning, Praed, and Thackeray--have reached. Besides all this,
he was a "considerable man of letters." But your considerable men of
letters, after flourishing, turn to dust in their season, and other
considerable or inconsiderable men of letters spring out of it. The true
poets and even the true satirists abide, and both as a poet and a
satirist Thomas Moore abides and will abide with them.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] _Etude sur la Vie et les Oeuvres de Thomas Moore_; by Gustave
Vallat. Paris: Rousseau. London: Asher and Co. Dublin: Hodges, Figgis,
and Co. 1887.
VII
LEIGH HUNT
To compare the peaceful and home-keeping art of criticism to the
adventurous one of lighthouse-building may seem an excursion into the
heroi-comic, if not into the tragic-burlesque. Neither is it in the
least my intention to dwell on a tolerably obvious metaphorical
resemblance between the two. It is certainly the business of the critic
to warn others off from the mistakes which have been committed by his
forerunners, and perhaps (for let us anticipate the crushing wit) from
his own. But that is not my reason for the suggestion. There is a story
of I forget what lighthouse which Smeaton, or Stevenson, or somebody
else, had unusual difficulty in establishing. The rock was too near the
surface for it to be safe or practicable to moor barges over it; and it
was uncovered for too short a time to enable any solid foundations to be
laid or even begun during one tide. So the engineer, with other
adventurous persons, got himself landed on it, succeeded after a vain
attempt or two in working an iron rod into the middle, and then hung on
bodily while the tide was up, that he and his men might begin again as
soon as it receded. In a mild and unexciting fashion, that is what the
critic has to do--to dig about till he makes a lodgment in his author,
hang on to it, and then begin to build. It is not always very easy work,
and it is never less easy than in the case of the author whom somebody
has kindly called "the Ariel of criticism." Leigh Hunt is an extremely
difficult person upon whom to make any critical lodgment, for the reason
that (I do not intend any disrespect by the comparison) he has much less
of the rock about him than of the shifting sand. I do not now speak of
the great Skimpole problem--we shall come to that presently--but merely
of the writer as shown in his works.
The works themselves are not particularly easy to get together in any
complete form, some of them being almost inextricably entangled in
defunct periodicals, and others reappearing in different guises in the
author's many published volumes. Mr. Kent's bibliography gives forty-six
different entries; Mr. Alexander Ireland's (to which he refers) gives, I
think, over eighty. Some years ago I remember receiving the catalogue of
a second-hand bookseller who offered what he very frankly confessed to
be far from a complete collection of the first editions, at the price of
a score or two of pounds; and here at least the first are in some cases
the only issues. Probably this is one reason why selections from Leigh
Hunt, of which Mr. Kent's is the latest and best, have been frequent. I
have seen two certainly, and I think three, within as many years.
Luckily, however, quite enough for the reader's if not for the critic's
purpose is easily obtainable. The poems can be bought in more forms than
one; Messrs. Smith and Elder have reprinted cheaply the "Autobiography,"
"Men, Women, and Books," "Imagination and Fancy," "The Town," "Wit and
Humour," "Table Talk," and "A Jar of Honey." Other reprints of "One
Hundred Romances of Real Life" (one of his merest pieces of book-making)
and of his "Stories from the Italian Poets," one of his worst pieces of
criticism, but agreeably reproduced in every respect save the hideous
American spelling, have recently appeared. The complete and uniform
issue, the want of which to some lovers of books (I own myself among
them) is never quite made up by a scratch company of volumes of all
dates, sizes, and prints, is indeed wanting. But still you can get a
working Leigh Hunt together.
It is when you have got him that your trouble begins; and before it is
done the critic, if he be one of those who are not satisfied with a mere
_compte rendu_, is likely to acknowledge that Leigh Hunt, if "Ariel" be
in some respects too complimentary a name for him, is at any rate a
most tricksy spirit. The finest taste in some ways, contrasting with
what can only be called the most horrible vulgarity in others; a light
hand tediously boring again and again at obviously miscomprehended
questions of religion, philosophy, and politics; a keen appetite for
humour condescending to thin and repeated jests; a reviler of kings
going out of his way laboriously to beslaver royalty; a man of letters,
of talent almost touching genius, who seldom writes a dozen consecutive
good pages:--these are only some of the inconsistencies that meet us in
Leigh Hunt.
He has related the history of his immediate and remoter forbears with
considerable minuteness--with more minuteness indeed by far than he has
bestowed upon all but a few passages of his own life. For the general
reader, however, it is quite sufficient to know that his father, the
Reverend Isaac Hunt, who belonged to a clerical family in Barbados, went
for his education to the still British Provinces of North America,
married a Philadelphia girl, Mary Shewell, practised as a lawyer till
the Revolution broke out, and then being driven from his adopted country
as a loyalist, settled in England, took orders, drifted into
Unitarianism or anythingarianism, and ended his days, after not
infrequent visits to the King's Bench, comfortably enough, but hanging
rather loose on society, his friends, and a pension. Leigh Hunt (his
godfathers and godmothers gave him also the names of James Henry, which
he dropped) was the youngest son, and was born on 19th October 1784. His
best youthful remembrance, and one of the most really humorous things he
ever said, was that he used, after a childish indulgence in bad
language, to think to himself with a shudder when he received any mark
of favour, "Ah! they little suspect I'm the boy who said 'd----n.'" But
at seven years old he went to Christ's Hospital, and continued there for
another seven. His reminiscences of that seminary, put down pretty
early, and afterwards embodied in the "Autobiography," are even better
known from the fact that they served as a text, and as the occasion of a
little gentle raillery, to Elia's famous essay than in themselves. For
some years after leaving school he did nothing definite but write
verses, which his father (who seems to have been gifted with a plentiful
lack of judgment in most incidents and relations of life) published when
the boy was but sixteen. They are as nearly as possible valueless, but
they went through three editions in a very short time. It ought to be
remembered that except Cowper, who was just dead, and Crabbe, who had
for years intermitted writing, the public had only Rogers and Southey
for poets, for it would none of the "Lyrical Ballads," and the "Lay of
the Last Minstrel" had not yet been published. So that it did not make
one of its worst mistakes in taking up Leigh Hunt, who certainly had
poetry in him, if he did not put it forth quite so early as this. He was
made a kind of lion, but, fortunately or unfortunately for him, only in
middle-class circles where there were no patrons. He was quite an old
man--nearly twenty--when he made regular entry into the periodical
writing which kept him (with the aid of his friends) for nearly sixty
years. "Mr. Town, Junior" (altered from an old signature of Colman's)
contributed theatrical criticisms, which do not seem to have been paid
for, to an evening paper, the _Traveller_, now surviving as a second
title to the _Globe_. His bent in this direction was assisted by the
fact that his elder brother John had been apprenticed to a printer, and
had desires to be a publisher. In January 1808 the two brothers started
the _Examiner_, and Leigh Hunt edited it with a great deal of courage
for fourteen years. He threw away for this the only piece of solid
preferment that he ever had, a clerkship in the War Office which
Addington gave him. The references to this act of recklessness or
self-sacrifice in the Autobiography are rather enigmatical. His two
functions were no doubt incompatible at best, especially considering the
violent Opposition tone which the _Examiner_ took. But Leigh Hunt,
whatever faults he had, was not quite a hypocrite; and he hints pretty
broadly that if he had not resigned he might have been asked to do so,
not from any political reasons, but simply because he did his work very
badly. He was much more at home in the _Examiner_ (with which for a
short time was joined the quarterly _Reflector_), though his warmest
admirers candidly admit that he knew nothing about politics. In 1809 he
married a Miss Marianne Kent, whose station was not very exalted, and
whose son admits with unusual frankness that she was "the reverse of
handsome, and without accomplishments," adding rather whimsically that
this person, "the reverse of handsome," had "a pretty figure, beautiful
black hair and magnificent eyes," and though "without accomplishments"
had "a very strong natural turn for plastic art." At any rate she seems
to have suited Leigh Hunt admirably. The _Examiner_ soon became
ill-noted with Government, but it was not till the end of 1812 that a
grip could be got of it. Leigh Hunt's offence is in the ordinary books
rather undervalued. That he (or his contributor) called the Prince
Regent, as is commonly said, "a fat Adonis of fifty" (the exact words
are, "this Adonis in loveliness is a corpulent man of fifty") may have
been the chief sting, but was certainly not the chief legal offence.
Leigh Hunt called the ruler of his country "a violator of his word, a
libertine over head and ears in disgrace, a despiser of domestic ties,
the companion of demi-reps, a man who had just closed half a century
without one single claim on the gratitude of his country or the respect
of posterity." It might be true or it might be false; but certainly
there was then not a country in Europe where it would have been allowed
to be said of the chief of the state. And I am not sure that it could be
said now anywhere but in Ireland, where considerably worse things were
said with impunity of Lord Spencer and Sir George Trevelyan. At any rate
the brothers were prosecuted and fined five hundred pounds each, with
two years' imprisonment. The sentence was carried out; but Leigh Hunt's
imprisonment in Horsemonger Lane Gaol was the merest farce of
incarceration. He could not indeed go beyond the prison walls. But he
had a comfortable suite of rooms which he was permitted to furnish and
decorate just as he liked; he was allowed to have his wife and family
with him; he had a tiny garden of his own, and free access to that of
the prison; there was no restriction on visitors, who brought him
presents just as they chose; and he became a kind of fashion with the
Opposition. Jeremy Bentham came and played at battledore and shuttlecock
with him--an almost appalling idea, for it will not do to trust too
implicitly to Leigh Hunt's declaration that Jeremy's object was to
suggest "an improvement in the constitution of shuttlecocks." The
_Examiner_ itself continued undisturbed, and except for the "I can't get
out" feeling, which even of itself cannot be compared for one moment to
that of a modern prisoner condemned to his cell and the
exercising-ground, it is rather difficult to see much reason for Leigh
Hunt's complaints. The imprisonment may have affected his health, but it
certainly brought him troops of friends, and gave him leisure to do not
only his journalist's work, but things much more serious. Here he wrote
and published his first poem since the Juvenilia, "A Feast of the Poets"
(not much of a thing), and here he wrote, though he did not publish it
till his liberation, the "Story of Rimini," by far his most important
poem, both for intrinsic character and for influence on others. He had
known Lamb from boyhood, and Shelley some years; he now made the
acquaintance of Keats, Hazlitt, and Byron.
In the next five years after his liberation he did a great deal of work,
the best by far being the periodical called the _Indicator_, a weekly
paper which ran for sixty-six numbers. The _Indicator_ was the first
thing that I ever read of Hunt's, and, by no means for that reason only,
I think it the best. Its buttonholing papers, of a kind since widely
imitated, were the most popular; but there are romantic things in it,
such as "The Daughter of Hippocrates" (paraphrased and expanded from Sir
John Mandeville with Hunt's peculiar skill), which seem to me better. It
was at the end of these five years that Leigh Hunt resolved upon the
second adventure (his imprisonment being the first and involuntary) of
his otherwise easy-going life--an adventure the immediate consequences
of which were unfortunate in many ways, but which supplied him with a
good deal of literary material. This was his visit to Italy as a kind of
literary _attaché_ to Lord Byron, and editor of a quarterly magazine,
the _Liberal_. The idea was Shelley's, and if Shelley had lived, it
might not have resulted quite so disastrously, for Shelley was
absolutely untiring as a helper of lame dogs over stiles. As it was, the
excursion distinctly contradicted the saying (condemned by some as
immoral) that a bad beginning makes a good ending. The Hunt family,
which now included several children, embarked, in November of all months
in the year, on a small ship bound for Italy. They were something like a
month getting down the Channel in tremendous weather, and at last when
their ship had to turn tail from near Scilly and run into Dartmouth,
Hunt, whose wife was extremely ill of lung-disease, made up his mind to
stay for the winter in Devonshire. He passed the time pleasantly enough
at Plymouth, which they left once more in May 1822, reaching Leghorn at
the end of June. Shelley's death happened within ten days of their
arrival, and Byron and Leigh Hunt were left to get on together. How
badly they got on is pretty generally known, might have been foreseen
from the beginning, and is not very profitable to dwell on. Leigh Hunt's
mixture of familiarity and "airs" could not have been worse mixed to
suit the taste of Byron. The "noble poet" too was not a person who liked
to be spunged upon; and his coolest admirers may sympathise with his
disgust when he found that he had upon his hands a man of letters with a
large family whom he was literally expected to keep, whose society was
disagreeable to him, who lampooned his friends, who differed with him on
every point of taste, and who did not think it necessary to be grateful.
For Leigh Hunt, somewhat on Lamb's system of compensation for coming
late by going away early, combined his readiness to receive favours with
a practice of not acknowledging the slightest obligation for them.
Byron's departure for Greece was in its way lucky, but it left Hunt
stranded. He remained in Italy for rather more than three years and then
returned home across the Continent. The _Liberal_, which contains work
of his, of Byron's, of Shelley's, and of Hazlitt's, is interesting
enough and worth buying in its original form, but it did not pay. Of the
unlucky book on his relations with Byron which followed--the worst act
by far of his life--I shall not say much. No one has attempted to defend
it, and he himself apologises for it frankly and fully in his
Autobiography. It is impossible, however, not to remark that the offence
was much aggravated by its deliberate character. For the book was not
published in the heat of the moment, but three years after Hunt's return
to England and four after Byron's death.
The remaining thirty years of Hunt's life were wholly literary. As for
residences, he hovered about London, living successively at Highgate,
Epsom, Brompton, Chelsea, Kensington, and divers other places. At
Chelsea he was very intimate with the Carlyles, and, while he was
perhaps of all living men of letters most leniently judged by those not
particularly lenient judges, we have nowhere such vivid glimpses of
Hunt's peculiar weaknesses as in the memoirs of Carlyle and his wife.
Why Leigh Hunt was always in such difficulties is not at first obvious,
for he was the reverse of an idle man; he seems, though thriftless, to
have been by no means very sumptuous in his way of living; everybody
helped him, and his writing was always popular. He appears to have felt
not a little sore that nothing was done for him when his political
friends came into power after the Reform Bill--and remained there for
almost the whole of the rest of his life. He had certainly in some
senses borne the burden and heat of the day for Liberalism. But he was
one of those reckless people who, without meaning to offend anybody in
particular, offend friends as well as foes; the days of sinecures were
even then passing or passed; and it is very difficult to conceive any
office, even with the lightest duties, in which Leigh Hunt would not
have come to grief. As for his writing, his son's earnest plea as to his
not being an idle man is no doubt true enough, but he never seems to
have reconciled himself to the regular drudgery of miscellaneous
article writing for newspapers which is almost the only kind of
journalism that really pays, and his books did not sell very largely. In
his latter days, however, things became easier for him. The unfailing
kindness of the Shelley family gave him (in 1844 when Sir Percy Shelley
came into his property) a regular annuity of £120; two royal gifts of
£200 each and in 1847 a pension of the same amount were added; and two
benefit nights of Dickens's famous amateur company brought him in
something like a cool thousand, as Dickens himself would have said. Of
his last years Mr. Kent, who was intimate with him, gives much the
pleasantest account known to me. He died on 28th August 1859, surviving
his wife only two years.
I can imagine some one, at the name of Dickens in the preceding
paragraph, thinking or saying, that if the author of _Bleak House_
raised a thousand pounds for his old friend, he took the value of it and
infinitely more out of him. It is impossible to shirk the Skimpole
affair in any really critical notice of Leigh Hunt. To put unpleasant
things briefly, that famous character was at once recognised by every
one as a caricature, perhaps ill-natured but certainly brilliant, of
what an enemy might have said of the author of "Rimini." Thornton Hunt,
the eldest of Leigh Hunt's children, and a writer of no small power,
took the matter up and forced from Dickens a contradiction, or
disavowal, with which I am afraid the recording angel must have had
some little difficulty. Strangely enough the last words of Macaulay's
that we have concern this affair; and they may be quoted as Sir George
Trevelyan gives them, written by his uncle in those days at Holly Lodge
when the shadow of death was heavy on him.