Characteristics of the "Cockney School"--Reasons for Tory
enmity--Establishment of _Blackwood's Magazine_ and the _Quarterly
Review_--Their methods of attack--Other targets--Authorship of anonymous
articles--Members of the Cockney group--Byron--Hunt--Keats--Shelley--
Hazlitt.
The word "Cockney" says Bulwer-Lytton, signifies the "archetype of the
Londoner east of Temple Bar, and is as grotesquely identified with the
Bells of Bow as Quasimodo with those of Notre Dame."[446] The epithet
remains doubtful in origin but is proverbially significant of odium and of
ridicule. R. H. Horne asserts that, in its first application, it meant
merely "pastoral, minus nature."[447] The word did not long carry so
harmless a connotation. It was first applied to Hunt by the Tory journals
in 1817 and, in the phrase "Cockney School," was gradually extended until
it included most of his associates. The group of men thus arbitrarily
banded together did not form a _school_ or cult, and themselves resented
such a classification. They differed widely in their fundamental
principles of life and art. They were not all of one vocation. On the
other hand they had certain superficial points in common which made them
collectively vulnerable to the dart of the enemy. They were Londoners[448]
by birth or by adoption; with the exception of Shelley they may all be
said to have belonged to the middle class; the most Cockneyfied of them
had certain vulgar mannerisms; they egotistically paraded their personal
affairs in public; they praised each other somewhat fulsomely in
dedications and elsewhere, though not always to the full satisfaction of
everybody concerned; they presented each other with wreaths of bay,
laurel, and roses, and with locks of hair; they agreed in liking Thomas
Moore and in disliking Southey; they moved with complacency within a
limited circle to the exclusion of a large city; in general they were
liberal in politics and in religion; they were in revolt against French
criticism; they chose Elizabethan or Italian models, and, as a rule, they
conceitedly ignored or contemned contemporary writers.
The gatherings of the coterie have been nowhere better described than by
Cowden Clarke:
"Evenings of Mozartian operatic and chamber music at Vincent
Novello's own house, where Leigh Hunt, Shelley, Keats and the Lambs
were invited guests; the brilliant supper parties at the alternate
dwellings of the Novellos, the Hunts and the Lambs, who had mutually
agreed that bread and cheese, with celery, and Elia's immortalized
'Lutheran beer' were to be the sole cates provided; the meetings at
the theatres, when Munden, Dowton, Liston, Bannister, Elliston and
Fanny Kelly were on the stage; the picnic repasts enjoyed together by
appointment in the fields that lay spread in green breadth and
luxuriance between the west end of Oxford Street and the western
slope of Hampstead Hill--are things never to be forgotten."[449]
Miss Mitford relates a ludicrous incident of one of these meetings:
"Leigh Hunt (not the notorious Mr. Henry Hunt, but the fop, poet and
politician of the 'Examiner') is a great keeper of birthdays. He was
celebrating that of Haydn, the great composer--giving a dinner,
crowning his bust with laurels, berhyming the poor dear German, and
conducting an apotheosis in full form. Somebody told Mr. Haydon they
were celebrating _his_ birthday. So off he trotted to Hampstead, and
bolted into the company--made a very fine animated speech--thanked
him most sincerely for what they had done him and the arts in his
person."[450]
At one time the set became violently vegetarian. The enthusiasm came to a
sudden end, as narrated by Joseph Severn:
"Leigh Hunt most eloquently discussed the charms and advantages of
these vegetable banquets, depicting in glowing words the cauliflowers
swimming in melted butter, and the peas and beans never profaned with
animal gravy. In the midst of his rhapsody he was interrupted by the
venerable Wordsworth, who begged permission to ask a question. 'If,'
he said, 'by chance of good luck they ever met with a caterpillar,
they thanked their stars for the delicious morsel of animal food.'
This absurdity all came to an end by an ugly discovery. Haydon, whose
ruddy face had kept the other enthusiasts from sinking under their
scanty diet--for they clung fondly to the hope that they would become
like him, although they increased daily in pallor and leanness--this
Haydon was discovered one day coming out of a chop-house. He was
promptly taxed with treachery, when he honestly confessed that every
day after the vegetable repast he ate a good beef-steak. This fact
plunged the others in despair, and Leigh Hunt assured me that on
vegetable diet his constitution had received a blow from which he had
never recovered. With Shelley it was different, for he was by nature
formed to regard animal food repulsively."[451]
The causes of the enmity of the press were political rather than literary
or personal and have already been sufficiently dwelt upon in the preceding
chapters. The strong rivalry between Edinburgh and London as publishing
strongholds intensified the strife. Hunt in particular had centered
attention upon himself by his persistent and violent attacks on Gifford
and Southey for several years previous to 1817. Besides _The Examiner's_
persistent allusions to these two unregenerates, a savage diatribe had
appeared in the _Feast of the Poets_, which alluded to Gifford's humble
origin and mediocre ability, charged him with being a government tool, and
continued: "But a vile, peevish temper, the more inexcusable in its
indulgence, because he appears to have had early warning of its effects,
breaks out in every page of his criticism, and only renders his affected
grinning the more obnoxious ... I pass over the nauseous epistle to Peter
Pindar, and even notes to his Baviad and Moeviad, where though less
vulgar in his language, he has a great deal of the pert cant and snip-snap
which he deprecates."[452] During 1817, _The Examiner_ had concerned
itself particularly with Southey. He had been called an apostate, a
hypocrite, and almost every other name in Hunt's abusive vocabulary. Sir
Walter Scott had not been spared. His politics were said to be easily
estimated by the "simple fact, that of all the advocates of Charles the
Second, he is the least scrupulous in mentioning his crimes, because he is
the least abashed;" his command of prose was declared equal to nothing
beyond "a plain statement or a brief piece of criticism;" his poetry "a
little thinking conveyed in a great many words."[453] Hunt thus secured to
himself, through offensive and aggressive abuse, the hostility of the
Tories both in England and in Scotland. His weaknesses and affectations
made him a conspicuous and assailable target for the inevitable return
fire.[454]
The establishment by the Tories of the _Quarterly Review_ in 1809 and of
_Blackwood's Magazine_ in 1817 was with the view of opposing and, if
possible, of suppressing the _Edinburgh Review_ and _The Examiner_. The
brunt of the hostility fell upon the latter, for Hunt, by reason of his
extreme social and religious policy, could not always rally the _Edinburgh
Review_ to his support. With the founding of the _London Magazine_ in 1820
he had a new ally in its editor, John Scott, but the war had then already
raged for three years, and Scott fell a victim to it in two years'
time.[455] By a process of elimination Scott fixed the identity of
"Z"--such was the only signature of the articles on the Cockney School in
_Blackwood's_--upon Lockhart. He also asserted that Lockhart was the
editor of the magazine. Lockhart demanded an apology. His friend Christie
took up the quarrel. In the duel which followed Scott was fatally wounded.
His death followed Keats's within four days.
The method of attack with the _Quarterly_ and with _Blackwood's_ was much
the same. They differed chiefly in the style of approach. The former may
be compared to heavy artillery, slow, cumbrous and crushing. The reviews
indeed often verge on dullness and stupidity. Neither Gifford nor Southey
seemed to have been blessed with the saving grace of humor in dealing with
the Cockney School. _Blackwood's_, on the other hand, had too much, for
whenever one of the so-called Cockneys was mentioned, its contributors
wallowed in the mire of coarse buffoonery and cruel satire, disgusting
scandal and vulgar parody. The only counter-irritant to such a dose is the
clever joking and keen humor; but even when this is clean, which is rare,
the whole is rendered unpalatable by the thought of its cruelty and of its
frequent falsity. Furthermore, _Blackwood's_ was more merciless in its
persecution than the _Quarterly_ in that it was untiring. It was
perpetually discharging a fresh fusilade. Both magazines disguised their
real motives under a cloak of religious zeal and monarchical loyalty.
While Hunt did much to bring the hornet's nest about his ears, he was not
wholly deserving of the amount, and not at all of the kind, of stinging
calumny that he had to endure. Neither were the members of the Cockney
School the only ones who provoked such antagonism from the same magazine.
Other famous libels of _Blackwood's_ that should be mentioned to show the
disposition of its controllers were the _Chaldee Manuscript_; the
_Madonna of Dresden_ and other effusions of the "_Baron von
Lauerwinckel_"; the _Diary_ and _Horae Sinicae of Ensign O'Doherty_; and the
_Diary of William Wastle, Blackwood and Dr. Morris_. _Letter to Sir Walter
Scott, Bart., on the Moral and other Characteristics of the Ebony and
Shandrydan School_,[456] cites a full list of _Blackwood's_ victims.
These, besides those of the Cockney School, were said to be Jeffrey,
Professor Playfair, Professor Dugald Stewart, Professor Leslie, James
Macintosh, Lord Brougham, Moore, Professor David Ricardo, Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Pringle, Dalzell, Cleghorn, Graham, Sharpe, Jameson, and Hogg,
the Ettrick Shepherd. The characters in _Noctes Ambrosianae_, Ticklers,
Scorpions and Shepherds, were said by the pamphleteer to respectively
tickle, sting and stultify, and to make a business "of insulting worth,
offending delicacy, caluminating genius, and outraging the decencies and
violating all the sanctities of life." Their weapons were "loathsome
billingsgate and brutality," and "sublime bathos." An interesting
statement, not elsewhere found, is made by the anonymous author of the
pamphlet that the proprietor of the Black Bull Inn imputed the death of
his wife to the first volume of _Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk_, a
series similar to the _Noctes Ambrosianae_. Sir Walter Scott is told that
he cannot remain innocent if he remains indifferent to the machinations of
the "Ebony and Shandrydan School"--as the writer pleases to call the
_Blackwood's_ group. Another interesting pamphlet of like nature is _The
Scorpion Critic Unmasked; or Animadversions on a Pretended Review of
"Fleurs, a Poem, in Four Books," which appeared in Blackwood's Edinburgh
Magazine for June, 1821, in a Letter to a Friend_.[457] _Blackwood's_ had
called Nathaniel John Hollingsworth, the author of the poem, and others of
his type, the "Leg of Mutton School."[458] Nothing in fact seems to have
given this magazine so much malicious delight as to create schools,
perhaps in a spirit of rivalry with the "Lake School" of the _Edinburgh
Review_. In the preceding April the "Manchester School" had been presented
by _Blackwood's_ to the public. Hollingsworth in turn created the
"Scorpion School" in order to deride _Blackwood's_. Other pamphlets of the
same kind were _Rebellion again Gulliver; or R-D-C-L-SM in Lilliput_. _A
Poetical Fragment from a Lilliputian Manuscript_, an anonymous publication
which appeared in Edinburgh in 1820; _Aspersions answered: an explanatory
Statement, advanced to the Public at Large, and to Every Reader of The
Quarterly Review in Particular_;[459] and _Another Article for the
Quarterly Review_;[460] both by William Hone in reply to the charge of
irreligion made by the _Quarterly_ against him.
William Blackwood, John Wilson or "Christopher North," Lockhart, and
perhaps Maginn, share the blame severally of _Blackwood's_; while in the
case of the _Quarterly_, to Gifford and Southey, already mentioned, must
be added Sir Walter Scott and Croker. The two last certainly countenanced
the actions of the others, even if they took no more active part. There
seems to be no way of determining the individual authorship of the various
articles. It was a secret jealously guarded at the time and it is unlikely
that any further disclosures will come to light. The victims themselves
hazarded as many guesses as more recent critics with no greater degree of
certainty. Leigh Hunt thought that the articles were written by Sir Walter
Scott;[461] Hazlitt said, "To pay those fellows _in their own coin_, the
way would be to begin with Walter Scott _and have at his clump
foot_;"[462] Charles Dilke thought that the articles were written by
Lockhart with the encouragement of Scott;[463] Haydon thought that "Z" was
Terry the actor, an intimate of the Blackwood party, who had been
exasperated because Hunt had failed to notice him in _The Examiner_;[464]
Shelley fancied that the articles in the _Quarterly_ were by Southey, and,
on his denial, attributed them to Henry Hart Milman.[465] Mrs. Oliphant in
her two ponderous volumes, _William Blackwood and His Sons_, practically
asserts that "Z" was Lockhart.[466] If the extent of her research is to be
the gauge of its value, her opinion is a very valuable one. Mr. Colvin
advances the theory that "Z" was Wilson or Lockhart, possibly revised by
William Blackwood.[467] Mr. Courthope thinks that Croker was the author of
the articles on _Endymion_ in the _Quarterly_.[468] Mr. Herford thinks
that the whole campaign against the Cockney School was "largely worked
out" by Lockhart.[469]
* * * * *
Hunt, Shelley, Hazlitt and Keats were the chief targets in the Cockney
School. The attacks on each of these are of such length as to require
separate discussion and will be returned to later. Those who attained
lesser notoriety were Charles Lamb, Haydon, Barry Cornwall, John Hamilton
Reynolds, Cornelius Webb, Charles Wells, Charles Dilke, Charles Lloyd, P.
G. Patmore and John Ketch (Abraham Franklin). Those who moved within the
same circle and who may by attraction be considered Cockneys are Charles
Cowden Clarke and his wife, Vincent Novello, Charles Armitage Brown, the
Olliers, Horace and James Smith, Douglas Jerrold, Joseph Severn, Laman
Blanchard, Thomas Noon Talfourd, Thomas Love Peacock, and perhaps Thomas
Hood.
Charles Lamb was first attacked in 1820. He had written essays somewhat in
the manner of Hunt and he was a contributor to the _London Magazine_,
which had blundered by censuring Castlereagh, Canning, and Wilberforce.
The much-despised Hazlitt was another of its force. Accordingly, "Elia"
was pronounced a "Cockney Scribbler," _Christ's Hospital_ an essay full of
offensive and reprehensible personalities,[470] and _All Fool's Day_
"mere inanity and very Cockneyism."[471] In April, 1822, _Blackwood's_
returned to the attack but with more than usual good nature. In _Noctes
Ambrosianae_ of that month Tickler is made to say:
"Elia in his happiest moods delights me; he is a fine soul; but when
he is dull, his dullness sets human stupidity at defiance. He is like
a well-bred, ill-trained pointer. He has a fine nose, but he can't or
won't range. He always keeps close to your foot, and then he points
larks or tit-mice. You see him snuffing and snoking and brandishing
his tail with the most impassioned enthusiasm, and then drawn round
into a semi-circle he stands beautifully--dead set. You expect a
burst of partridges, or a towering cock-pheasant, when lo, and
behold, away flits a lark, or you discover a mouse's nest, or there
is absolutely nothing at all. Perhaps a shrew has been there the day
before. Yet if Elia were mine, I would not part with him, for all his
faults."
A few years later Lamb became one of _Blackwood's_ contributors. Two
attacks on Lamb proceeded from the _Quarterly_. The _Confessions of a
Drunkard_, the writer says, "affords a fearful picture of the consequences
of intemperance which we have reason to know is a true tale."[472] In his
_Progress of Infidelity_, Southey asserted that Elia's volume of essays
wanted "only sounder religious feeling, to be as delightful as it is
original."[473] Lamb's wrath had been slowly gathering under the strain of
repeated attacks on Hunt, Hazlitt and himself. It culminated with
Southey's article. In the _London Magazine_ of October, 1823, he
repudiated at considerable length the compliments thrust upon him at the
expense of his friends, and denied the arraignment of drunkenness and
heterodoxy. Matters were then smoothed over between him and Southey
through an explanation which his unfailing good nature could not resist.
Haydon was nick-named the "Raphael of the Cockneys."[474] Until the
exhibition of _Christ's Entry into Jerusalem_ in Edinburgh in 1820, he
underwent the same kind of persecution as his friends. His "greasy hair"
was about as notorious as Hazlett's "pimpled face." But the picture
converted _Blackwood's_ crew. They apologized and confessed that their
misapprehensions had been due to the absurd style of laudation in _The
Examiner_. Henceforward they acknowledged him to be "a high Tory and an
aristocrat, and a sound Christian."[475]
Bryan Waller Procter, or Barry Cornwall, was satirized in _Blackwood's_
for his so-called effeminacy. In October, 1823, the following facetious
passage occurs: "the merry thought of a chick--three tea-spoonsfulls of
peas, the eighth part of a French roll, a sprig of cauliflower, and an
almost imperceptible dew of parsley" would dine the author of _The
Deluge_. The article on Shelley's _Posthumous Poems_ in the _Edinburgh_ of
July, 1824, was attributed to Procter by _Blackwood's_ and assailed in a
most disgusting manner. The article was by Hazlitt.
John Hamilton Reynolds was a friend of Keats, one of the _Young Poets_
reviewed by Hunt in _The Examiner_, and a contributor to the _London
Magazine_. His two poems, _Eden of the Imagination_ and _Fairies_, showed
Hunt's influence. In the former he had even dared to praise Hunt in the
notes.
Cornelius Webb was the author of numerous poems which exhibit in a marked
degree the Huntian peculiarities of diction pointed out in the first
chapter. He is moreover responsible for the unfortunate lines so often
quoted in derision by Blackwood's:
"Keats
The Muses' son of promise! and what feats
He yet may do."
His sonnets in the _Literary Pocket Book_ were thus reviewed in
_Blackwood's_ of December, 1821: "Now, Cornelius Webbe is a Jaw-breaker.
Let any man who desires to have his ivory dislodged, read the above sonnet
to March. Or shall we call Cornelius, the grinder? After reading aloud
these fourteen lines, we called in our Odontist, and he found that every
tooth in our head was loosened, and a slight fracture in the jaw. 'My
dearest Christopher', said the Odontist, in his wonted classical spirit,
'beware the Ides of March.' So saying, he bounced up in our faces and
disappeared."
Charles Wells was a friend of Hazlitt and of Keats. In true Cockney
fashion he sent the latter a sonnet and some roses and thus began the
acquaintance. Dilke was a friend of Keats, a radical, and an independent
critic in the manner of Hunt. Charles Lloyd was Lamb's friend, one of the
contributors to the _Literary Pocket Book_ of 1820, and a poet of
sentimental and descriptive propensities. P. G. Patmore was "Count Tims,
the Cockney."[476] Although he was a correspondent of _Blackwood's_, his
son has remarked that he was not _persona grata_, but was employed to
secure news from London; and permitted to write only when he did not
defend his friends too much.[477] "John Ketch" (Abraham Franklin) is
mentioned by Lord Byron as one of the "Cockney Scribblers."[478] Thomas
Hood, as brother-in-law of Reynolds, as assistant editor of the _London
Magazine_, and as an imitator in a small degree in his early work of Lamb
and of Hunt may be enumerated among the Cockneys, although he is not
usually included. Laman Blanchard was the friend of Procter, Lamb and
Hunt. He imitated Procter's _Dramatic Sketches_ and Lamb's _Essays_.
Talfourd was a member of the circle and the friend and biographer of Lamb.
He defended Edward Moxon when he was prosecuted for publishing _Queen
Mab_. Peacock was the friend of Shelley. The Ollier brothers, publishers,
introduced Keats, Shelley, Hunt, Lamb and Procter to the public.[479]
Although Byron was frequently at war with _Blackwood's_ and the
_Quarterly_, and although he was closely associated with Shelley and Hunt,
he was never stigmatized as a member of the Cockney School. Yet through
his alliance with them he came in for some opprobrium that he would
otherwise have escaped. _Blackwood's_ strove through ridicule to prevent
any growth of familiarity with Hunt or his fraternity. Its attitude
towards the dedication to Byron of the _Story of Rimini_ has already been
mentioned. Hunt's statement already quoted on p. 95 that "for the drama,
whatever good passages such a writer will always put forth, we hold that
he (Byron) has no more qualification than we have" was a choice morsel for
the Scotch birds of prey, enjoyed to the fullest extent in a review of
_Lyndsay's Dramas of the Ancient World_:
"Prigs will be preaching--and nothing but conceit cometh out of
Cockaigne. What an emasculated band of dramatists have deployed upon
our boards. A pale-faced, sallow set, like the misses of some Cockney
boarding-school, taking a constitutional walk, to get rid of their
habits of eating lime out of the wall.... But it was reserved to the
spirit of atheism of an age, to talk of a Cockney writing a tragedy.
When the mind ceases to believe in a Providence, it can believe in
anything else; but the pious soul feels that while to dream, even in
sleep, that a Cockney had written a successful tragedy, would be
repugnant to reason; certainly a more successful tragedy could not be
imagined, from the utter destruction of Cockaigne and all its
inhabitants. An earthquake or a shower of lava would be too
complimentary to the Cockneys; but what do you think of a shower of
soot from a multitude of foul chimneys, and the smell of gas from
exploded pipes. Something might be made of the idea.... The truth is,
that these mongrel and doggerel drivellers have an instinctive
abhorrence of a true poet; and they all ran out like so many curs
baying at the feet of the Pegasus on which Byron rode ... and the
eulogists of homely, and fireside, and little back-parlour incest,
what could they imagine of the unseduceable spirit of the spotless
Angiolina?... When Elliston, ignorant of what one gentleman owes to
another, or driven by stupidity to forget it, brought the Doge on the
stage, how crowed the Bantam Cocks of Cockaigne to see it damned!...
But Manfred and the Doge are not dead; while all that small fry have
disappeared in the mud, and are dried up like so many tadpoles in a
ditch, under the summer drowth. 'Lord Byron,' quoth Mr. Leigh Hunt,
'has about as much dramatic genius as _ourselves_!' He might as well
have said, 'Lucretia had about as much chastity as my own heroine in
Rimini;' or, 'Sir Phillip Sidney was about as much of the gentleman
as myself!'"[480]
Byron's attitude toward the Cockney School was expressed in a letter
written to John Murray during the Bowles controversy:
"With the rest of his (Hunt's) young people I have no acquaintance,
except through some things of theirs (which have been sent out
without my desire), and I confess that till I had read them I was not
aware of the full extent of human absurdity. Like Garrick's 'Ode to
Shakespeare,' _they_ '_defy criticism_.' These are of the personages
who decry Pope.... Mr. Hunt redeems himself by occasional beauties;
but the rest of these poor creatures seem so far gone that I would
not 'march through Coventry with them, that's flat!' were I in Mr.
Hunt's place. To be sure, he has 'led his ragamuffins where they will
be well peppered'; but a system-maker must receive all sorts of
proselytes. When they have really seen life--when they have felt
it--when they have travelled beyond the far distant boundaries of the
wilds of Middlesex--when they have overpassed the Alps of Highgate,
and traced to its sources the Nile of the New River--then, and not
till then, can it properly be permitted to them to despise Pope....
The grand distinction of the under forms of the new school of poets
is their _vulgarity_. By this I do not mean that they are coarse, but
'shabby-genteel,' as it is termed. A man may be _coarse_ and yet not
_vulgar_, and the reverse.... It is in their _finery_ that the new
school are _most_ vulgar, and they may be known by this at once; as
what we called at Harrow "A Sunday blood" might be easily
distinguished from a gentleman, although his clothes might be the
better cut, and his boots the best blackened of the two:--probably
because he made the one or cleaned the other, with his own hands....
In the present case, I speak of writing, not of persons. Of the
latter I know nothing; of the former I judge as it is found."[481]
Byron's opinion of Keats is too well known to need repetition. He thought
there was hope for Barry Cornwall if "he don't get spoiled by green tea
and the praises of Pentonville and Paradise Row. The pity of these men is,
that they never lived in _high life_ nor in _solitude_: there is no medium
for the knowledge of the _busy_ or the _still_ world. If admitted into
high life for a season, it is merely as _spectators_--they form no part of
the mechanism thereof."[482]
_Blackwood's_ of December, 1822, in a review of _The Liberal_, advised
Byron to "cut the Cockney"--"by far the most unaccountable of God's
works." Hunt is denominated "the menial of a lord." When Byron
notwithstanding its advice continued his "conjunction with these deluded
drivellers of Cockaigne" _Blackwood's_ grew savage towards the peer
himself: it is said that he suffered himself
"to be so enervated by the unworthy Delilahs which have enslaved his
imagination, as to be reduced to the foul office of displaying blind
buffooneries before the Philistines of Cockaigne ... I feel a moral
conviction that his lordship must have taken the Examiner, the
Liberal, the Rimini, the Round Table, as his model, and endeavored
to write himself down to the level of the capacities and the swinish
tastes of those with whom he has the misfortune, originally, I
believe, from charitable motives, to associate. This is the most
charitable hypothesis which I can frame. Indeed there are some verses
which have all the appearance of having been interpolated by the King
of the Cockneys."[483]
When Byron and Hunt had separated, _Blackwood's_ attempted to reinstate
Byron in his former position by declaring that he had been disgusted
beyond endurance on Hunt's arrival in Italy and that he had cut him very
soon in a "paroxysm of loathing."[484]
* * * * *
The declaration of war between the Cockneys and the Tory press was made
with a review of the _Story of Rimini_ in the _Quarterly_ of January,
1816. From this time on Hunt was the choice prey of the two magazines, and
others were attacked principally on account of him, or reached through
him. Hunt's writings were termed "eruptions of a disease" with which he
insists upon "inoculating mankind;" his language "an ungrammatical,
unauthorized, chaotic jargon." _Blackwood's_ of October, 1817, contained
the first of the long series of abusive articles which appeared in its
columns. Hazlitt in the _Edinburgh Review_ in June of the preceding year
had acclaimed the _Story of Rimini_ to be "a reminder of the pure and
glorious style that prevailed among us before French modes and French
methods of criticism." In it he had discovered a resemblance to Chaucer,
to the voluptuous pathos of Boccaccio and to the laughing graces of
Ariosto. To offset such statements _Blackwood's_ dubbed the new school the
"Cockney School" and made Hunt its chief doctor and professor. (Later, in
1823, _Blackwood's_ proudly claimed the honor of christening and said that
the _Quarterly_ used the epithet only when it had become a part of English
criticism.) It declared the dedication to Byron an insult and the poem the
product of affectation and gaudiness and continued:
"The beaux are attorney's apprentices, with chapeau bras and Limerick
gloves--fiddlers, harp teachers, and clerks of genius: the belles are
faded, fan-twinkling spinsters, prurient vulgar misses from school,
and enormous citizen's wives. The company are entertained with
luke-warm negus, and the sounds of a paltry piano forte.... His
poetry resembles that of a man who has kept company with
kept-mistresses. His muse talks indelicately like the tea-sipping
milliner's girl. Some excuse for her there might have been, had she
been hurried away by imagination or passion; but with her, indecency
seems a disease, she appears to speak unclean things from perfect
inanition." Hunt "would fain be always tripping and waltzing, and he
is very sorry that he cannot be allowed to walk about in the morning
with yellow breeches and flesh-colored silk stockings. He sticks an
artificial rosebud in his button hole in the midst of winter. He
wears no neckcloth, and cuts his hair in imitation of the prints of
Petrarch."
Nature in the eyes of a Cockney was said to consist only of "green fields,
jaunty streams, and o'er-arching leafiness;" no mountains were higher than
Highgate-hill nor streams more pastoral than the Serpentine River.[485]
_Blackwood's_ was near the truth in its criticism of Hunt's conception of
nature. While his appreciation was very genuine, it was restricted to
rural or suburban scenes, "of the town, towny."[486] The scale was that of
the window garden or a flower pot. Who but he could rhapsodize over a cut
flower or a bit of green; or could speak in spring "of being gay and
vernal and daffodilean?"[487] Yet he produced some delightful rural
poetry. Take this for instance:
"You know the rural feeling, and the charm
That stillness has for a world-fretted ear,
'Tis now deep whispering all about me here,
With thousand tiny bushings, like a swarm
Of atom bees, or fairies in alarm
Or noise of numerous bliss from distant spheres."[488]
The general characteristics of the school, briefly summarized, were said
to be ignorance and vulgarity, an entire absence of religion, a vague and
sour Jacobinism for patriotism, admiration of Chaucer and Spenser when
they resemble Hunt, and extreme moral depravity and obscenity. November,
1817, of _Blackwood's_ contained the notorious accusation against the
_Story of Rimini_ of immorality of purpose.[489] The poem was called "the
genteel comedy of incest." Francesca's sin was declared voluntary and her
sufferings sentimental. The changes from the historical version, an
espousal by proxy instead of betrothal, the omission of deformity, the
substitution of the duel for murder, and the happy opening, were
pronounced wilful perversions for the furtherance of corruption. Ford's
treatment of the same theme much more elevated. Hunt's defense was that
the catastrophe was Francesca's sufficient punishment.[490] In May, 1818,
the same charge was repeated: "No woman who has not either lost her
chastity, or is desirous of losing it, ever read the 'Story of Rimini'
without the flushings of shame and of self-reproach."
_The Examiner_ of November 2 and 16, 1817, quoted extracts from the first
of these articles and called upon the author to avow himself; otherwise to
an "utter disregard of _Truth_ and Decency, he adds the height of Meanness
and COWARDICE."[491] As might have been expected, this demand brought
forth nothing more than a disavowal from the London publishers who handled
_Blackwood's_ of all responsibility in the matter. June 14, 1818, _The
Examiner_ assailed the editor of the _Quarterly_ as a government critic
who disguised a political quarrel in literary garb, as a sycophant to
power and wealth:
"Grown old in the service of corruption, he drivels on to the last
with prostituted impotence, and shameless effrontery; salves a meagre
reputation for wit, by venting the driblets of his spleen and
impertinence on others; answers their arguments by confuting himself;
mistakes habitual obtuseness of intellect for a particular acuteness,
not to be imposed upon by shallow pretensions; unprincipled rancor
for zealous loyalty; and the irritable, discontented, vindictive, and
peevish effusions of bodily pain and mental infirmity, for proofs of
refinement of taste and strength of understanding."
This condescension to a use of his enemies' weapons only weakened Hunt's
position. Yet in the light of the secrecy maintained at the time and the
mystery surrounding the matter ever since, it is interesting to read
_Blackwood's_ contorted reply to Hunt's demand for an open fight, written
as late as January, 1826:
"Nor let it be said that, either on this or any other occasion, the
moral Satyrists (sic) in this magazine ever wished to remain unknown.
How, indeed, could they wish for what they well knew was impossible?
All the world has all along known the names of the gentlemen who have
uttered our winged words. Nor did it ever, for one single moment,
enter into the head of any one of them to wish--not to scorn
concealment. To gentlemen, too, they at all times acted like
gentlemen; but was it ever dreamt by the wildest that they were to
consider as such the scum of the earth? 'If I but knew who was my
slanderer,' was at one time the ludicrous skraigh of the convicted
Cockney. Why did he not ask? and what would he have got by asking?
Shame and confusion of face--unanswerable argument and cruel
chastisement. For before one word would have been deigned to the
sinner, he must have eaten--and the bitter roll is yet ready for
him--all the lies he had told for the last twenty years, and must
either have choked or been kicked."
In January, 1818, _Blackwood's_ issued a manifesto of their future
campaign. The Keatses, Shelleys, and Webbes, were to be taken in turn. The
charges of profligacy and obscenity against Hunt's poem were repeated, but
it was emphatically stated that there was no implication made in reference
to his private character--an ominous statement that any one with any
knowledge of _Blackwood's_ usual methods could only construe into a
warning that such an implication would speedily follow. The article was
signed "Z," a shadowy personage who sorrowfully called himself the
"present object" of Hunt's resentment and dislike. He seems to have
expected gratitude and affection in return for articles that would
compare favorably with the most scurrilous billingsgate of any of the
Humanistic controversies. In May, 1818, with due ceremony, Hunt was
proclaimed "King of the Cockneys" and editor of the Cockney Court-gazette.
His kingdom was the "Land of Cockaigne," a borrowing, most probably, from
the thirteenth century satire by that name. Keats's sonnet containing the
line "He of the rose, the violet, the spring" became the official Cockney
poem--by an "amiable but infatuated bardling." John Hunt was made Prince
John. With the lapse of time Hunt's crimes seem to have multiplied. He is
called a lunatic, a libeller, an abettor of murder and of assassination, a
coward, an incendiary, a Jacobin, a plebeian and a foe to virtue. He is
instructed, if sickened with the sins and follies of mankind, to withdraw
"to the holy contemplation of your own divine perfections, and there
'perk up with timid mouth' 'and lamping eyes' (as you have it) upon
what to you is dearer and more glorious than all created things
besides, till you become absorbed in your own identity--motionless,
mighty, and magnificent, in the pure calm of Cockneyism ... instead
of rousing yourself from your lair, like some noble beast when
attacked by the hunter, you roll yourself round like a sick hedgehog,
that has crawled out into the 'crisp' gravel walk round your box at
Hampstead, and oppose only the feeble pricks of your hunch'd-up back
to the kicks of any one who wishes less to hurt you, than to drive
you into your den."
The _Quarterly_ of the same month contained the notorious review of
_Foliage_. Southey, in a counterfeited Cockney style, contorts Hunt's
devotion to his leafy luxuries, his flowerets, wine, music and other
social joys into Epicureanism[492] and like unsound principles. He even
goes so far as to accuse him of incest and adultery in his private life.
There are disguised but unmistakable references to Keats and to Shelley;
the latter is credited with evil doings that fall little short of
machinations with the devil. The volume of poems, which was the ostensible
pretext for this parade of foul slander, not a word of which was true,
has, Southey says, richness of language and picturesqueness of
imagery.[493] The July number of _Blackwood's_ went a step beyond Southey
and identified the characters of the _Story of Rimini_ with Hunt and his
sister-in-law, Elizabeth Kent. After ostentatiously giving currency to the
scandal, "Z" then proceeds to deny the rumor--which had no existence save
in the minds of Hunt's vilifiers--in order to preserve immunity from
libel. At the time that Lamb replied to Southey in 1823 he took up these
charges made against Hunt in 1818. He said:
"I was admitted to his household for several years, and do most
solemnly aver that I believe him to be in his domestic relations as
correct as any man. He chose an ill-judged subject for a poem.... In
spite of 'Rimini,' I must look upon its author as a man of taste and
a poet. He is better than so; he is one of the most cordial-minded
men that I ever knew, and matchless as a fireside companion. I do not
mean to affront or wound your feelings when I say that in his more
genial moods, he has often reminded me of you."[494]
A facetious bit of prose _On Sonnet Writing_ and a _Sonnet on Myself_ in
_Blackwood's_ of April, 1819, parodied excellently the Cockney conceit and
mannerisms. The September number contrasted Henry Hunt, the representative
of the Cockney School of Politics, with Leigh Hunt, of the Cockney School
of Poetry; resenting loudly the claim of the two to prominence for "even
Douglasses never had more than one Bell-the-cat at a time." While Henry
Hunt "the brawny white feather of Cockspur-street" addresses street mobs,
the other Hunt, "the lank and sallow hypochondriac of the 'leafy rise'
and 'farmy fields' of Hampstead," "the whining milk-sop sonneteer of the
Examiner" is said to speak to a "sorely depressed remnant of 'single
gentlemen' in lodgings, and single ladies we know not where--a generation
affected with headaches, tea-drinking and all the nostalgia of the
nerves." It is hardly necessary to add that there was no connection
whatsoever between the two men.
_Blackwood's_ of October, 1819, announced _Foliage_ to be a posthumous
publication of Hunt's, presented to the public by his three friends,
Keats, Haydon and Novello. An affecting picture is drawn of the
now-departed Hunt in his once familiar costume of dressing-gown, yellow
breeches and red slippers, sipping tea, playing whist and writing sonnets.
His statement in the preface that a "love of sociability, of the country,
and the fine imagination of the Greeks" had prompted the poems is greatly
ridiculed. The first is said to have caused his death by an
over-indulgence in tea-drinking; his feeling for nature is said to be
limited to the lawns, stiles and hedges of Hampstead and his knowledge of
the imagination of the Greeks to quotations. The _Sonnet On Receiving a
Crown of Ivy from Keats_ came in for especial derision--"a blister clapped
on his head" would have been considered more appropriate.
Hunt's _Literary Pocket Books_ for 1819 and 1820 were reviewed in
_Blackwood's_ in December, 1819, in a remarkably kind article. They are
recommended as worth three times the price. The reviewer, who was no other
than "Christopher North," stated that he had purchased six copies.
_Blackwood's_ of September, 1820, reviewed _The Indicator_; of December,
1821, the 1822 _Literary Pocket Book_; the last contained coarse and
unkind allusions to Hunt's health. It declared the production of sonnets
in London and its suburbs about equal to the number of births and deaths.
In reply, _The Examiner_ of December 16, 1821, in an article entitled
_Modern Criticism_, italicised extracts from _Blackwood's_ to bring out
peculiarities of grammar and diction. _Blackwood's_ of January, 1822,
contained a sonnet which it was pretended was Hunt's New Year's greeting,
but which was instead a clever parody on his sonnet-style.
The issue of the next month announced the triumvirate of _The Liberal_
and, through Byron's "noble generosity," Hunt's departure with his wife
and "little Johnnys" upon a "perilous voyage on the un-cockney ocean....
He and his companions will now, like his own Nereids,
turn
And toss upon the ocean's lifting billows,
Making them _banks and_ pillows,
Upon whose _springiness_ they lean and ride;
Some with an _inward back_; some _upward-eyed_,
Feeling the sky; and some with _sidelong hips_,
O'er which the surface of the water slips."
The first number of the _Noctes Ambrosianae_ appeared in March. The
following passage refers to the launching of _The Liberal_ in a dialogue
between the Editor and O'Doherty:
O. Hand me the lemons. This holy alliance of Pisa will be a queer
affair. _The Examiner_ has let down its price from a tenpenny to a
sevenpenny. They say the Editor here is to be one of that faction,
for they must publish in London, of course.
Ed. Of course, but I doubt if they will be able to sell many. Byron
is a prince, but these dabbling dogglerers destroy every dish they
dip in.
O. Apt alliteration's artful aid.
Ed. Imagine Shelly [sic], with his spavin, and Hunt, with his
staingalt, going in harness with such a caperer as Byron,
three-a-breast. He'll knock the wind out of them both the first
canter.
O. 'Tis pity Keats is dead.--I suppose you could not venture to
publish a sonnet in which he is mentioned now? The _Quarterly_ (who
killed him, as Shelly says) would blame you.
Ed. Let's hear it. Is it your own?
O. No; 'twas written many months ago by a certain great Italian
genius, who cuts a figure about the London routs--one Fudgiolo.
Ed. Try to recollect it. (Here follows the sonnet.)
_Blackwood's_ of December, 1822, had passages on the Cockney School in
_Noctes Ambrosianae_. Number VII. of the series of articles on its members
reviewed Hunt's _Florentine Lovers_, or, in their phrasing, his _Art of
Love_, the story of which is wilfully misrepresented. Hunt is declared
"the most irresistible knight-errant errotic extant ... the most
contemptible little capon of the bantam breed that ever vainly dropped a
wing, or sidled up to a partlet. He can no more crow than a hen. Byron
makes love like Sir Peter, Moore like a tom-tit and Hunt like a bantam."
The writer then charges Hunt with irreligion, indecency, sensuality and
licentiousness. He is called "A Fool" and an "exquisite idiot." Such a
burst of rage on the part of the anti-Cockneys, after their wrath had
begun to cool as seen in the review of the _Literary Pocket Book_, was
doubtless due to Hunt's association in _The Liberal_ with Byron: "What can
Byron mean by patronizing a Cockney?... by far the most unaccountable of
God's works ... a scavenger raking in the filth of the common sewers and
stews, for a few gold pieces thrown down by a nobleman.... But that Satan
should stoop to associate with an incubus, shows that there is degeneracy
in hell." The tirade closes with a poem of six stanzas of which this is a
fair sample:
"The kind Cockney Monarch, he bids us farewell
Taking his place in the Leghorn-bound smack--
In the smack, in the smack--Ah! will he ne'er come back?"
At the appearance of the last number of _The Liberal_, _Blackwood's_
rejoiced thus:
"Their hum, to be sure, is awfully subdued. They remind me of a
mutchkin of wasps in a bottle, all sticking to each other--heads and
tails--rumps glued with treacle and vinegar, wax and pus--helpless,
hopeless, stingless, wingless, springless--utterly abandoned of
air--choked and choking--mutually entangling and entangled--and
mutually disgusting and disgusted--the last blistering ferment of
incarnate filth working itself into one mass of oblivion in one
bruised and battered sprawl of swipes and venom."[495]
_Blackwood's_ of October, 1823, declared Hazlitt to be the most loathsome
and Hunt the most ludicrous of the group. Before the close of the year
Hunt threatened the magazine with a suit for libel. This threat did not
prevent in January a notice of Hunt's _Ultra-Crepidarius_, a satire on
Gifford much in the vein and style of the _Feast of the Poets_. Mercury
and Venus come to earth in search of the former's lost shoe. On their
arrival they discover that it has been converted by command of the gods
into a man named Gifford. The satire is facetiously attributed by
_Blackwood's_ to Master Hunt, aged ten; a "small, smart, smattering
satirist of an air-haparent ... Cockney chick." The parent is reproached
for putting a child in such a position.
"Had Leigh Hunt, the papa, boldly advanced on any great emergency, at
the peril of his life and crown, to snatch the legitimate issue of
his own loins from the shrivelled hands of some blear-eyed old
beldam, into whose small cabbage-garden Maximilian had headed a
forlorn hope, good and well, and beautiful; but not so, when a
stalwart and cankered carl like Mr. Gifford, with his quarter-staff,
belabours the shoulders of his Majesty, and sire shoves son between
himself and the Pounder ... such pusillanimity involves forfeiture of
the Crown, and from this hour we declare Leigh dethroned, and the
boy-bard of _Ultra-Crepidarius_ King of Cockaigne."
Wearying of this make-believe, the reviewer discards such a possibility of
authorship and considers Hunt's grandfather, a legendary personage whose
age is put at ninety-six and who is given the name of Zachariah Hunt:
"What a gross, vulgar, leering old dog it is! Was ever the couch of the
celestials so profaned before! One thinks of some aged cur, with mangy
back, glazed eye-balls dropping rheum, and with most disconsolate muzzard
muzzling among the fleas of his abominable loins, by some accident lying
upon the bed where Love and Beauty are embracing and embraced." As a final
potentiality the reviewer deliberates whether Hunt by any possibility
could have been the author and closes with this peroration: "There he goes
soaking, and swaling, and straddling up the sky, like Daniel O'Rouke on
goose back!... Toes in if you please. The goose is galloping--why don't
you stand in the stirrups?... Alas Pegasus smells his native marshes;
instead of making for Olympus, he is off in a wallop to the fens of
Lincolnshire! Bellerophon has lost his seat--now he clings desperately by
the tail--a single feather holds him from eternity."
Article VIII of the regular series, reviewing Hunt's _Bacchus in Tuscany_,
appeared in _Blackwood's_ of August, 1825. His allegiance to Apollo in
Cockaigne is declared to have been changed to Bacchus in Tuscany, and his
usual beverage of weak tea to a diet of wine on which he swills like a
hippopotamus. He is depicted as Jupiter Tonans and his manner to Hebe is
compared with a "natty Bagman to the barmaid of the Hen and Chickens." The
same number noticed Sotheby's translation of Homer. The opportunity was
not lost to refer unfavorably to Hunt's translations of the same in
_Foliage_.
_The Rebellion of the Beasts_; or _The Ass is Dead! Long Live the Ass!!!
By a Late Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge_, with the motto "A man
hath pre-eminence above a beast," was published anonymously by J. & H. L.
Hunt in London in 1825. There is every reason to believe that it was by
Hunt, although he does not mention it elsewhere. It is an exceedingly
clever satire on monarchy and far surpasses anything else of the kind that
he ever did. Had the Tories of Edinburgh suspected the author it would
probably have made them apoplectic with rage.
With _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_ the rage of the two
periodicals reached a grand climax and seemingly exhausted itself. The
_Quarterly_ in March of the same year in which it appeared said: "The last
wiggle of expiring imbecility appears in these days to be a volume of
personal Reminiscences." It characterized the book as a melancholy product
of coxcombry and cockneyism: as "dirty gabble about men's wives and men's
mistresses--and men's lackeys, and even the mistresses of the lackeys:" as
"the miserable book of a miserable man; the little airy fopperies of its
manner are like the fantastic trip and convulsive simpers of some poor
worn-out wanton, struggling between famine and remorse, leering through
her tears." _Blackwood's_ of the same month pictured Hunt riding in the
tourney lists of Cockaigne to the tune of Cock-a-doodle-doo. It accused
him, besides those misdemeanors many times previously exploited, of clumsy
casuistry, of falsehood regarding his transaction with Colburn, of
ill-breeding in dragging his wife into such a book. The following is the
culmination of the author's anger:
"Mr. Hunt, who to the prating pertness of the parrot, the chattering
impudence of the magpie--to say nothing of the mowling malice of the
monkey--adds the hissiness of the bill-pouting gander, and the
gobble-bluster of the bubbly-jock--to say nothing of the forward
valour of the brock or badger--threatens death and destruction to all
writers of prose or verse, who shall dare to say white is the black
of his eye, or that his book is not like a vase lighted up from
within with the torch of truth ... Frezeland Bantam is the vainest
bird that attempts to crow; and by and by our feverish friend comes
out into the light, and begins to trim his plumage! His toilet over
he basks on the ditch side, and has not the smallest doubt in the
world that he is a Bird of Paradise."
The _Literary Gazette_ joined in the hue-and-cry against "the pert
vulgarity and miserable low-mindedness of Cockney-land," against "the
disagreeable, envious, bickering, hating, slandering, contemptible,
drivelling and be-devilling wretches."[496] _Blackwood's_ of February,
1830, in a review of Moore's _Life, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron_,
satirizes the conversational habits of the Cockneys "who all keep
chattering during meals and after them, like so many monkeys, emulous and
envious of each other's eloquence, and pulling out with their paws fetid
observations from their cheek-pouches, which are nuts to them, though
instead of kernel, nothing but snuff."
Not only did the articles in _Blackwood's_ cease after this last, but in
1834 a full and complete apology was tendered Hunt by Christopher North:
"And Shelley truly loved Leigh Hunt. Their friendship was honorable
to both, for it was as disinterested as sincere; and I hope Gurney
will let a certain person in the City understand that I treat his
offer of a reviewal of Mr. Hunt's _London Journal_ with disdain. If
he has anything to say against us or that gentleman, either
conjunctly or severally, let him out with it in some other channel;
and I promise him a touch and taste of the crutch. He talks to me of
_Maga's_ desertion of principle; but if he were a Christian--nay, a
man--his heart and his head would tell him that the Animosities are
mortal, but the Humanities live for ever--and that Leigh Hunt has
more talent in his little finger than the puling prig, who has taken
upon himself to lecture Christopher North in a scrawl crawling with
forgotten falsehoods."[497]
Professor Wilson's invitation to Hunt to contribute to his magazine was
declined politely but firmly. Leigh Hunt wrote to Charles Cowden Clarke:
"_Blackwood's_ and I, poetically, are becoming the best friends in the
world. The other day there was an Ode in _Blackwood_ in honour of the
memory of Shelley; and I look for one of Keats. I hope this will give you
faith in glimpses of the Golden Age."[498] Nowhere does Hunt show
resentment or malice for the sufferings of years. Yet Mrs. Oliphant, in
her advocacy of the Blackwood group, goes the length of saying that he
displayed "feebleness of mind and body," "petty meannesses,"
"unwillingness or incapacity to take a high view even of friends or
benefactors," a lightheartedness and frivolity, and "enduring spite." She
grudgingly admits his "almost feminine grace and charm." She says that he
thought his friends deserved only "casual thanks when they did what was
but their manifest duty ... bitter and spiteful satire when they attended
to their own affairs instead." She makes a radically false statement when
she says that he defended Byron, Shelley, Keats, Moore, and many others in
_The Examiner_, but found an opportunity to say an evil word of most of
them afterwards; and that when _Blackwood's_ or the _Quarterly_ attacked
him, he was convinced that "it must be really one of his friends who was
being struck at through him."[499]
The _Quarterly_ delayed longer in assuming a friendly attitude. It
remained silent until 1867, when Bulwer, in a comparison of Hunt and
Hazlitt, conceded to the former a gracefulness and kindliness of
disposition, a smoothness of tone and delicacy of finish in his writing.
There was no formal apology as in the case of _Blackwood's_.
Carlyle says that Hunt suffered an "obloquy and calumny through the Tory
press--perhaps a greater quantity of baseness, persevering, implacable
calumny, than any other living writer has undergone; which long course of
hostility ... may be regarded as the beginning of his worst distresses,
and a main cause of them down to this day."[500] Macaulay said: "There is
hardly a man living whose merits have been so grudgingly allowed, and
whose faults have been so cruelly expiated."[501] For a period of more
than a quarter of a century, from the beginning of the crusade against him
until about 1845, partly as the result of the misrepresentation of the
press, and partly as a natural consequence of his own foibles and early
blunders, a pretty general antagonism existed against him. At the end of
that time his honesty and talents were recognized and rewarded publicly by
the government. And the public has come more and more to esteem his
personal character.
* * * * *
The _Quarterly_ of April, 1818, contained the stupid and savage review of
_Endymion_, provoked almost solely by the Keats's offence in being the
friend and public protege of Leigh Hunt. The simple and manly preface[502]
was misconstrued into a formula for Huntian poetry, and its allusion to a
"London drizzle or a Scotch mist" into a "deprecation of criticism in a
feverish manner." Leigh Hunt asked years afterwards how "anybody could
answer such an appeal to the mercy of strength with the cruelty of
weakness. All the good for which Mr. Gifford pretended to be zealous, he
might have effected with pain to no one, and glory to himself; and
therefore all the evil he mixed with it was of his own making."[503] The
general trend of the article and the reviewer's acknowledgment that he had
read only the first book of the poem are well known. The following passage
refers directly to Keats's connection with Hunt:
"The author is a copyist of Mr. Hunt, but he is more unintelligible,
almost as rugged, twice as diffuse, and ten times more tiresome and
absurd than his prototype; who, though he impudently presumed to seat
himself in the chair of criticism, and to measure his own poetry by
his own standard, yet generally had a meaning. But Mr. Keats advanced
no dogmas which he was bound to support by examples; his nonsense is
therefore quite gratuitous; he writes it for his own sake, and, being
bitten by Mr. Leigh Hunt's insane criticism, more than rivals the
insanity of his poetry."[504]
_Blackwood's_ followed the _Quarterly's_ lead in August, reviewing Keats's
first volume at the same time with _Endymion_. He is reproached with
madness, with metromania, with low origin, with perversion of talents
suited only to an apprenticeship, all because he admired Hunt sufficiently
to adopt some of his theories and because he had been called in _The
Examiner_ one of "two stars of glorious magnitude." The sonnet _Written on
the day that Mr. Leigh Hunt left prison_, the _Sonnet to Haydon_, and
_Sleep and Poetry_, are anathematized. In the last Keats is said to speak
with
"contempt of some of the most exquisite spirits that the world ever
produced, merely because they did not happen to exert their faculties
in laborious affected descriptions of flowers seen in window-pots, or
cascades heard at Vauxhall; in short, because they chose to be wits,
philosophers, patriots, and poets, rather than to found the Cockney
school of versification, morality and politics, a century before its
time. After blaspheming himself into a fury against Boileau, etc.,
Mr. Keats comforts himself and his readers with a view of the present
more promising state of affairs; above all, with the ripened glories
of the poet of _Rimini_."
The denunciation of the "calm, settled, drivelling idiocy" of _Endymion_
in the same article is famous, but in a discussion of the Cockney School
it is well to recall the following:
"From his prototype Hunt, John Keats has acquired a sort of vague
idea, that the Greeks were a most tasteful people, and that no
mythology can be so finely adopted for the purpose of poetry as
theirs. It is amusing to see what a hand the Cockneys make of this
mythology; the one confesses that he never read the Greek Tragedians
and the other knows Homer only from Chapman; and both of them write
about Apollo, Pan, Nymphs, Muses, and Mysteries, as might be expected
from persons of their education. We shall not, however, enlarge at
present upon this subject, as we mean to dedicate an entire paper to
the classical attainments and attempts of the Cockney poets."
The versification is said to expose the defects of Hunt's system ten times
more than Hunt's own poetry. The mocking close is as follows: "It is a
better and a wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than a starved poet;
so back to the shop, Mr. John, back to 'plasters, pills, and ointment
boxes,' etc. But, for Heaven's sake, young Sangrado, be a little more
sparing of extenuatives and soporifics in your practice than you have been
in your poetry."
The delusion that these articles were the direct cause of Keats's death,
an impression given wide currency by the passages in _Adonais_[505] and
_Don Juan_,[506] has long since been dispelled by the evidence of
Hunt,[507] Fanny Brawne, C. C. Clarke and, most important of all, Keats's
own letters.[508] It is not likely that he was affected by them as much as
either Hunt or Hazlitt, for he showed more indifference and greater
dignity under fire than either. His courage and his craving for future
fame do not seem to have wavered during the year in which they appeared.
Joseph Severn has testified that he never heard Keats mention
_Blackwood's_ and that he considered what his friend endured from the
press as "one of the least of his miseries"; that he knew so little about
the whole matter that when he met Sir Walter Scott in Rome many years
after he was at a loss to understand Scott's embarrassment when Keats's
name was mentioned; and it was not until a friend afterwards explained
that Scott was connected with one of the magazines which was popularly
supposed to have caused Keats's death that he could fathom it.[509]
It would have been impossible for a more obtuse man than Leigh Hunt not to
have realized from the import of these two articles that Keats was abused
largely because of the association with himself and, but for that, might
have remained in peaceful obscurity. Hunt therefore wisely refrained from
further defense as it would only have made matters worse. During the year
1818 only one notice of Keats appeared in _The Examiner_.[510] During the
same year three sonnets to Keats appeared in _Foliage_. Yet it has been
several times stated that Hunt forsook Keats at this time. Keats, under
the hallucination of disease himself, accused Hunt of neglect, yet there
were three reasons which made a persistent defense on the part of Hunt not
to be expected. First, he was unaware, according to his own statement, of
the extent of the defamation; second, he realized that his championship
and friendship had been the original cause of wrath in the enemies' camp
against Keats and that any activity on his part would only incense them
further,[511] and third, he did not approve of Keats's only publication of
that year and could not give it his support, as he frankly told Keats
himself. Mr. Forman and Mr. Rossetti both scout the idea of disertion and
disloyalty. Yet Mr. Hall Caine has made much[512] of a charge which has
been denied by Hunt and ultimately repudiated by Keats. He has, moreover,
overlooked the fact that Hunt's bitter satire, _Ultra-Crepidarius_, was
written in _1818_ as a reply to Keats's critics but was withheld from
publication, presumably only for reasons of prudence, until 1823. When
Keats's feeling on the subject was brought to his knowledge years later,
Hunt wrote:
"Keats appears to have been of opinion that I ought to have taken
more notice of what the critics said against him. And perhaps I
ought. My notices of them may not have been sufficient. I may have
too much contented myself with panegyrizing his genius, and thinking
the objections to it of no ultimate importance. Had he given me a
hint to another effect, I should have acted upon it. But in truth, as
I have before intimated, I did not see a twentieth part of what was
said against us; nor had I the slightest notion, at that period,
that he took criticism so much to heart. I was in the habit, though a
public man, of living in a world of abstractions of my own; and I
regarded him as of a nature still more abstracted, and sure of
renown. Though I was a politician (so to speak), I had scarcely a
political work in my library. Spensers and Arabian Tales filled up
the shelves; and Spenser himself was not remoter, in my eyes, from
all the common-places of life, than my new friend. Our whole talk was
made up of idealisms. In the streets we were in the thick of the old
woods. I little suspected, as I did afterwards, that the hunters had
struck him; and never at any time did I suspect that he could have
imagined it desired by his friends. Let me quit the subject of so
afflicting a delusion."[513]
The _Edinburgh Review_ of August, 1820, discussed _Endymion_ and the 1820
volume. While it lamented the extravagances and obscurities, the
"intoxication of sweetness" and the perversion of rhyme, it gave Keats due
credit for his genius and his appreciation of the spirit of poetry. Hunt's
review of _Lamia_[514] and the other poems of the 1820 volume appeared in
_The Indicator_ of the same month. _Blackwood's_ answered the next month,
abusing Hunt roundly and faintly praising the poems. The following proves
that their chief object was to strike Hunt through Keats:
"It is a pity that this young man, John Keats, author of _Endymion_,
and some other poems, should have belonged to the Cockney School--for
he is evidently possessed of talents that, under better direction,
might have done very considerable things. As it is, he bids fair to
sink himself beneath such a mass of affectation, conceit, and Cockney
pedantry, as I never expected to see heaped together by anybody,
except the first founder of the School.... There is much merit in
some of the stanzas of Mr. Keats's last volume, which I have just
seen; no doubt he is a fine feeling lad--and I hope he will live to
despise Leigh Hunt and be a poet."
Hazlitt, in May of the next year wrote of the persecution of Keats in the
_Edinburgh Review_:
"Nor is it only obnoxious writers on politics themselves, but all
their friends and acquaintances, and those whom they casually notice,
that come under their sweeping anathema. It is proper to make a clear
stage. The friends of Caesar must not be suspected of an amicable
intercourse with patriotic and incendiary writers. A young poet comes
forward; an early and favourable notice appears of some boyish verses
of his in the _Examiner_, independently of all political opinion.
That alone decides fate; and from that moment he is set upon, pulled
in pieces, and hunted into his grave by the whole venal crew in full
cry after him. It was crime enough that he dared to accept praise
from so disreputable a quarter."
In a letter from Hunt in Italy to _The Examiner_, July 7, 1822, an inquiry
is made why Mr. Gifford has never noticed Keats's last volume: "that
beautiful volume containing _Lamia_, the story from Boccaccio, and that
magnificent fragment _Hyperion_?" _Blackwood's_ of August replied to these
two defenses in a tirade of twenty-two pages against the _Edinburgh
Review_, Hazlitt, and Hunt. The _Noctes Ambrosianae_ of October continued
in the same strain and, though the grave should have protected Keats from
such banter, revived the old allusions to the apothecary and his pills.
In self defense against the charge, that its attacks and those of the
_Quarterly_ had broken Keats's heart, _Blackwood's_ in January, 1826, said
that it alone had dealt with Keats, Shelley and Procter with "_common
sense_ or _common feeling_"; that, seeing Keats in the road to ruin with
the Cockneys, it had "tried to save him by wholesome and severe
discipline--they drove him to poverty, expatriation and death." The most
remarkable part of this remarkable justification is this: "Keats outhunted
Hunt in a species of emasculated pruriency, that, although invented in
Little Britain, looks as if it were the prospect of some imaginative
Eunuch's muse within the melancholy inspiration of the Haram" (_sic_).
In March, 1828, in a review of _Lord Byron and Some of His
Contemporaries_, the _Quarterly_ seized the opportunity to revert to the
author's friendship for Keats in its old hostile manner; and, in a
criticism of Coleridge's poems in August, 1834, to speak of his "dreamy,
half-swooning style of verse criticised by Lord Byron (in language too
strong for print) as the fatal sin of Mr. John Keats." Finally in March,
1840, in _Journalism in France_, there is another feeble effort at
defense; a resentment of the "twaddle" against the _Quarterly_ "when they
had the misfortune to criticise a sickly poet, who died soon afterwards,
apparently for the express purpose of dishonoring us."
One of Hunt's utterances in regard to Keats and his critics disposes
finally of the matter: "his fame may now forgive the critics who disliked
his politics, and did not understand his poetry."[515]
* * * * *
From Italy Shelley wrote to Peacock:
"I most devoutly wish I were living near London.... My inclination
points to Hampstead; but I do not know whether I should not make up
my mind to something more completely suburban. What are mountains,
trees, heaths, or even glorious and ever beautiful sky, with such
sunsets as I have seen at Hampstead, to friends? Social enjoyment, in
some form or other, is the Alpha and the Omega of existence. All that
I see in Italy--and from my tower window I now see the magnificent
peaks of the Apennine half enclosing the plain--is nothing. It
dwindles into smoke in the mind, when I think of some familiar forms
of scenery, little perhaps in themselves, over which old remembrances
have thrown a delightful colour."[516]
The attacks of the _Quarterly_ of May, 1818, on Shelley's private life and
of April, 1819, on the _Revolt of Islam_, and the reply of _The Examiner_,
have already been discussed on p. 77 of the third chapter. The assault was
renewed in October, 1821. The dominating characteristic of Shelley's
poetry is said to be "its frequent and total want of meaning." In
_Prometheus Unbound_ there were said to be many absurdities "in defiance
of common sense and even of grammar ... a mere jumble of words and
heterogeneous ideas, connected by slight and accidental associations,
among which it is impossible to distinguish the principal object from the
accessory." The poem is declared to be full of "flagrant offences against
morality and religion" and the poet to have gone out of his way to "revile
Christianity and its author." As a final verdict the reviewer says: "Mr.
Shelley's poetry is, in sober sadness, _drivelling prose run mad_.... Be
his private qualities what they may, his poems ... are at war with reason,
with taste, with virtue, in short, with all that dignifies man, or that
man reveres." The _London Literary Gazette_ joined its forces to the
_Quarterly_ and scored _Prometheus Unbound_ in 1820, _Queen Mab_ in 1821.
_The Examiner_ of June 16, 23 and July 7, 1822, contained Hunt's answer to
the two onslaughts. He accused the writer in the _Quarterly_ of having
used six stars to indicate an omission, in order to imply that the name of
Christ had been blasphemously used; of having put quotation marks to
sentences not in the author criticised and of having intentionally left
out so much at times as to make the context seem absurd. At the same time
Hunt stated that he agreed that Shelley's poetry was of "too abstract and
metaphysical a cast ... too wilful and gratuitous in its metaphors"; and
that it would have been better if he had kept metaphysics and polemics out
of poetry. But at the same time he asserted that Shelley had written much
that was unmetaphysical and poetically beautiful, as _The Cenci_, the _Ode
to a Skylark_ and _Adonais_. Of the second he wrote: "I know of nothing
more beautiful than this,--more choice of tones, more natural in words,
more abundant in exquisite, cordial, and most poetic associations." He
characterized Southey's reviews as cant, Gifford's as bitter commonplace
and Croker's as pettifogging.
_Blackwood's_ reviewed _Adonais_ and _The Cenci_ in December, 1821. The
Della Cruscans were reported to have come again from "retreats of Cockney
dalliance in the London suburbs" and "by wainloads from Pisa." The
Cockneys were said to hate everything that was good and true and
honorable, all moral ties and Christian principles, and to be steeped in
desperate licentiousness. _Adonais_ is fifty-five stanzas of
"unintelligible stuff" made up of every possible epithet that the poet has
been able to "conglomerate in his piracy through the Lexicon." The sense
has been wholly subordinated to the rhymes. The author is a "glutton of
names and colours" and has accomplished no more than might be done on such
subjects as Mother Goose, Waterloo or Tom Thumb. Two cruel and loathsome
parodies follow: _Wouther the city marshal broke his leg_ and an _Elegy on
My Tom Cat_, which, it is claimed, are less nonsensical, verbose and
inflated than _Adonais_. _The Cenci_ is "a vulgar vocabulary of rottenness
and reptilism" in an "odiferous, colorific and daisy-enamoured style." It
is regretted by the writer that it is impossible to believe that Shelley's
reason is unsettled, for this would be the best apology for the
poem.[517]
When _The Liberal_ was organized Shelley was spoken of thus:
"But Percy Bysshe Shelly has now published a long series of poems,
the only object of which seems to be the promotion of _atheism_ and
_incest_; and we can no longer hesitate to avow our belief, that he
is as worthy of co-operating with the King of Cockaigne, as he is
unworthy of co-operating with Lord Byron. Shelley is a man of genius,
but he has no sort of sense or judgment. He is merely 'an inspired
idiot.' Leigh Hunt is a man of talents, but vanity and vulgarity
neutralize all his efforts to pollute the public mind. Lord Byron we
regard not only as a man of lofty genius, but of great shrewdness and
knowledge of the world. What can HE seriously hope from associating
his name with such people as these?"[518]
As in the case of Keats, _Blackwood's_ did not have the decency to desist
from its indecent articles after Shelley's death. September, 1824, this
vulgar ridicule of the two dead poets appeared in answer to Bryan Waller
Procter's review of Shelley's poems in the preceding number of the
_Edinburgh Review_:
"Mr. Shelley died, it seems, with a volume of Mr. Keats's poetry
grasped with the hand in his bosom--rather an awkward posture, as you
will be convinced if you try it. But what a rash man Shelley was, to
put to sea in a frail boat with Jack's poetry on board. Why, man, it
would sink a trireme. In the preface to Mr. Shelley's poems we are
told that his 'vessel bore out of sight with a favorable wind;' but
what is that to the purpose? It had Endymion on board, and there was
an end. Seventeen ton of pig iron would not be more fatal ballast.
Down went the boat with a 'swirl'! I lay a wager that it righted soon
after evicting Jack."
In the face of these articles against it as evidence, _Blackwood's_, as
early as January, 1828, had the audacity to claim--perhaps with the
expectation that its audience was gifted with a sense of subtle
humor--that Shelley had been praised in its pages for his fortitude,
patience, and many other noble qualities, and that this praise had
irritated the other Cockneys and made the whole trouble. If Keats suffered
at the hands of the Edinburgh dictators for his association with Hunt the
balance weighed in the other direction in the case of Shelley. All the
crimes and opinions of which he was deemed guilty were passed on to Hunt.
But Hunt gladly suffered for Shelley.
Hazlitt, although of Irish descent and a native of Shropshire, and of such
independence as to belong to no school whatsoever, came in for a share of
abuse second only in virulence to that showered on Hunt.[519] In the
_Quarterly_ of April, 1817, in a review of the _Round Table_, probably in
retaliation for his abuse of Southey in _The Examiner_, Hazlitt's papers
are denominated "vulgar descriptions, silly paradoxes, flat truisms, misty
sophistry, broken English, ill-humour and rancorous abuse." His
characterizations of Pitt and Burke are "vulgar and foul invective," and
"loathsome trash." The author might have described washerwomen forever,
the reviewer asserts, "but if the creature, in his endeavours to see the
light, must make his way over the tombs of illustrious men, disfiguring
the records of their greatness with the slime and filth which marks his
tracks, it is right to point out that he may be flung back to the
situation in which nature designed that he should grovel."
The _Characters of Shakespeare's Plays_ was made an excuse for dissecting
the morals and understanding of this "poor cankered creature."[520] The
_Lectures on the English Poets_ is characterized as a "third predatory
incursion on taste and common sense ... either completely unintelligible,
or exhibits only faint and dubious glimpses of meaning ... of that happy
texture that leaves not a trace in the mind of either reader or
hearer."[521] The _Political Essays_ was said to mark the writer as a
death's head hawk-moth, a creature already placed in a state of damnation,
the drudge of _The Examiner_, the ward of Billingsgate, the slanderer of
the human race, one of the plagues of England.[522] Later, in a discussion
of _Table Talk_,[523] he becomes a "Slang-Whanger" ("a gabbler who employs
slang to amuse the rabble").
Hazlitt's _Letter to Gifford_, 1819, was a reply to all previous attacks
of the _Quarterly_. For a pamphlet of eighty-seven pages on such a subject
it is "lively reading," for Hazlitt, like Burke, as Mr. Birrell has
remarked, excelled in a quarrel.[524] He calls Gifford a cat's paw, the
Government critic, the paymaster of the band of Gentleman Pensioners, a
nuisance, a
"dull, envious, pragmatical, low-bred man.... Grown old in the
service of corruption, he drivels on to the last with prostituted
impotence and shameless effrontery; salves a meagre reputation for
wit, by venting the driblets and spleen of his wrath on others;
answers their arguments by confuting himself; mistakes habitual
obtuseness of intellect for a particular acuteness; not to be imposed
upon by shallow appearances; unprincipled rancour for zealous
loyalty; and the irritable, discontented, vindictive, peevish
effusions of bodily pain and mental imbecility for proofs of
refinement of taste and strength of understanding."[525]
_Blackwood's_ had accepted abstracts of Hazlitt's _Lectures on the English
Poets_[526] from P. G. Patmore without comment and even managed a lengthy
comparison of Jeffrey and Hazlitt with an approach to fair dealing. But by
August, 1818, he had been identified with the "Cockney crew" and he
became "that wild, black-bill Hazlitt," a "lounge in third-rate
bookshops"; and as a critic of Shakspere, a gander gabbling at that
"divine swan." In April of the following year he was christened the
"Aristotle" of the Cockneys. His _Table Talk_ provoked ten pages of
vituperation,[527] and _Liber Amoris_, two reviews as coarse as the
provocation.[528] In the first of these, apropos of his contributions to
the _Edinburgh Review_ and in particular of his article on the _Periodical
Press of Britain_, the downfall of the magazine and its editor is
announced as certain. Hazlitt is called a literary flunky, a sore, an
ulcer, a poor devil. In the second he is Hunt's orderly, the "Mars of the
Hampstead heavy dragoons."
Hazlitt found relief for his feelings by threatening _Blackwood's_ with a
lawsuit. Yet in July, 1824, appeared an elaborate comparison of Hunt and
Hazlitt in _Blackwood's_ choicest manner and in March, 1825, a review of
the _Spirit of the Age_. After 1828 the defamatory articles ceased
entirely. In 1867 appeared what might be construed into an attempt at
reparation by Bulwer-Lytton. Hazlitt was still spoken of as the most
aggressive of the Cockneys, discourteous and unscrupulous, a bitter
politician who would substitute universal submission to Napoleon for
established monarchial institutions; but he is credited with strong powers
of reason, of judicial criticism and of metaphysical speculation, and with
perception of sentiment, truth and beauty.