CONCLUSION
It is curious that, in the lives of three such geniuses as Shelley, Byron
and Keats a man of lesser gifts and of weaker fibre should have played so
large a part as did Leigh Hunt. It is more curious in view of the fact
that the period of intimate association in each case extended over only a
few years. The explanation must be sought in the accident of the age and
in the personality of the man himself. It was an era of stirring action
and of strong feeling. Men were clamoring for freedom from the trammels of
the past and were pressing forward to the new day. Through the union of
some of the qualities of the pioneer and of the prophet, Leigh Hunt was
thrust into a position of prominence that he might not have gained at any
other time, for he lacked the vital requisites of true leadership.
His personal quality was as rare as his opportunity. He had a personal
ascendancy, a strange fascination born of the sympathy and chivalry, the
sweetness and joyousness of his nature. An exotic warmth and glow worked
its spell upon those about him. Barry Cornwall said that he was a "compact
of all the spring winds that blew." His lovableness and very "genius for
friendship" bound intimately to him those who were thus attracted. There
was, besides, an elusiveness and an ethereality about him--as Carlyle
expressed it--"a fine tricksy medium between the poet and the wit, half a
sylph and half an Ariel ... a fairy fluctuating bark." The "vinous
quality" of his mind, Hazlitt said, intoxicated those who came in contact
with him.
In the case of Shelley it was Hunt the man, rather than the writer, that
held him. Charm was the magnet in a friendship that, in its perfection and
deep intimacy, deserves to be ranked with the fabled ones of old--a love
passing the love of woman. There is no single cloud of distrust or
disloyalty in the whole story of their relations.
Second to the personal tie may be ranked Hunt's influence on Shelley's
politics, greater in this instance than in the case of Byron or Keats.
Hunt's attitude was an important factor in forming Shelley's political
creed. With Godwin, he drew Shelley's attention from the creation of
imaginary universes to the less speculative issues of earth. Indeed,
Shelley's main reliance for a knowledge of political happenings during
many years, and practically his only one for the last four years of his
life, was _The Examiner_. He was guided and moderated by it in his general
attitude. In the specific instances already cited, the stimulus for poems
or the information for prose tracts and articles can be directly traced to
Hunt.
In regard to literary art Hunt did not affect Shelley beyond pointing the
way to a freer use of the heroic couplet, and in a limited degree, in four
or five of his minor poems, influencing him in the use of a familiar
diction. Only in his letters does Shelley show any inclination to
emphasize "social enjoyments" or suburban delights. That the literary
influence was so slight is not surprising when Shelley's powers of
speculation and accurate scholarship are compared with Hunt's want of
concentration and shallow attainments. Notwithstanding this intellectual
gulf, strong convictions, with a moral courage sufficient to support them,
and a congeniality of tastes and temperament, made possible an ideal
comradeship.
Byron, like Shelley, was attracted by Hunt's charm of personality. An
imprisoned martyr and a persecuted editor appealed to Byron's love of the
spectacular. Political sympathy furthered the friendship. In a literary
way, Byron influenced Hunt more than Hunt influenced him.
Their intercourse is the story of a pleasant acquaintance with a
disagreeable sequel and much error on both sides. With two men of such
varying caliber and tastes, the "wren and eagle" as Shelley called them,
thrown together under such trying circumstances, it could hardly have been
otherwise. Their love of liberty and courage of opposition were the only
things in common. Byron recognized to the last Hunt's good qualities and
Hunt, except for the bitter years in Italy and immediately after his
return, proclaimed Byron's genius; but, for all that, they were
temperamentally opposed. Byron detested Hunt's small vulgarities as much
as Hunt loathed Byron's assumed superiority.
The relation with Keats was the reverse of that in the other two cases. It
was an intellectual affinity throughout. At no time were Keats and Hunt
very close to each other. Nor, indeed, does Keats seem to have had the
capacity for intimate friendship, except with his brothers and, possibly,
Brown and Severn.
The intercourse of the two men had its disadvantages for Keats in an
injurious influence on his early work and in the public association of his
name with that of Hunt's; but the latter's literary patronage and loving
interpretation when Keats was wholly unknown, the friendships made
possible for him with others, the open home and tender care whenever
needed, the unfailing sympathy, encouragement and admiration so freely
given, the new fields of art, music and books opened up, and the
pleasantness of the connection at the first, should more than compensate
for the attacks which Keats suffered as a member of the Cockney School.
From this view it seems very ungrateful of George Keats to have said that
he was sorry that his brother's name should go down to posterity
associated with Hunt's. Keats received far more than he gave in return.
Briefly stated, Keats's early work shows the marked influence of Hunt in
the selection of subjects, in a love of Italian and older English
literature, in the "domestic" touch, in the colloquial and feeble diction,
and in the lapses of taste. It is only fair to Hunt to emphasize that this
was not wholly a question of influence. It was due, as Keats himself
confessed, to a natural affinity of gifts and tastes, though the one was
so much more highly gifted than the other. Keats soon saw his mistake.
_Endymion_ showed a great improvement and the 1820 volume an almost
complete absence of his own _bourgeois_ tendencies and of the effect of
Hunt's specious theories. Yet it was undoubtedly through Hunt that Keats
in his later poems began to imitate Dryden.
In connection with the work of all three poets, Hunt's criticism is a more
important fact of literary history than his services of friendship. He
had, as Bulwer-Lytton has remarked, the first requisite of a good critic,
a good heart. He had also wonderful sympathy with aspiring authorship. His
insight was most remarkable of all in the appreciation of his
contemporaries. With powers of critical perception that might be called an
instinct for genius, he discovered Shelley and Keats and heralded them to
the public. The same ability helped him to appreciate Byron, Hazlitt and
Lamb. Browning, Tennyson and Rossetti were other young poets whom he
encouraged and supported. He defended the Lake School in 1814 when it
still had many deriders. He anticipated Arnold's judgment when he wrote
that "Wordsworth was a fine lettuce, with too many outside leaves." As
early as 1832 he wrote of the "wonderful works of Sir Walter Scott, the
remarkable criticism of Hazlitt, the magnetism of Keats, the tragedy and
winged philosophy of Shelley, the passion of Byron, the art and festivity
of Moore." To value correctly such criticism it is necessary to remember
that the Romantic movement was still in its first youth at the time. His
criticism of the three men in question, like his criticisms in general, is
distinguished by great fairness and absence of all personal jealousy, by a
delicacy of feeling that will not be fully felt until scattered notes and
buried prefaces are gathered together. He was animated chiefly by an
inborn love of poetry and enjoyment of all beautiful things. If he
sometimes fell short in understanding Homer, Dante and Shakespeare, he was
perfectly sincere and independent, and pretended nothing that he did not
feel. His range of information was truly remarkable, though not deep and
accurate. His style was slipshod. With the exception of the essay _What is
Poetry_, he fails in concentration and generalization. He never clinched
his results, but was forever flitting from one sweet to another. His
method was impressionistic in its appreciation of physical beauty. There
is no comprehension whatsoever of mystical beauty. It is the curious
instance of a man of almost ascetic habits who revelled and luxuriated in
the sensuous beauties of literature. The reader of such books as
_Imagination and Fancy_ and the half dozen others of the same kind will
see his wonderful power of selection. His attempt to interpret and
"popularize literature"--a cause in which he laboured long and
steadfastly--was one of the greatest services he rendered his age, even if
his habit of italicization and running comment for the purpose of calling
attention to perfectly patent beauties irritated some of his readers. His
critical taste, when exercised on the work of others, was almost
faultless. The occasional vulgarities of which he was guilty in his
original work do not intrude here; they were superficial and were not a
part of the man. Through his criticism he discovered and championed
illustrious contemporaries; he instituted the Italian revival in creative
literature in the early part of the century; he assisted in resuscitating
the interest in sixteenth and seventeenth century literature.
Hunt's services of friendship to Byron, Shelley and Keats, his able
criticism and just defense of them, have found their reward in the
inseparable association of his name with their immortal ones. They easily
surpassed him in every department of writing in which they contested, yet
the _man_ was strong and alluring enough in his relations with them to
prove a determining and, on the whole, beneficent influence in their
lives.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The following list includes only the most important contributions to the
present study. Where the indebtedness consists merely of one or two
references, such indebtedness is acknowledged in a footnote.
Alden, Raymond Macdonald. English Verse. New York, 1903.
Andrews, A. The History of British Journalism. London, 1859.
Arnold, Matthew. Essays in Criticism. London and New York, 1903.
Beers, H. A. History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century. New
York, 1901.
Blessington, Countess of. Conversations of Lord Byron with the Countess of
Blessington. London, 1834.
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.
Byron, George Gordon Noel. The Works of Lord Byron. A New, Revised and
Enlarged Edition, with Illustrations. Poetry. Ed. by Ernest Hartley
Coleridge. 7 vols.
Letters and Journals. Ed. by Rowland E. Prothero. 6 vols. London and
New York, 1898.
Letters and Journals of Lord Byron: with Notices of His Life, by
Thomas Moore. 2 vols. London, 1830.
Brandes, George. Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature. 6 vols.
New York, 1906.
Caine, T. Hall. Cobwebs of Criticism. "The Cockney School," pp. 123-266.
London, 1883.
Carlyle, Thomas. Early Letters of Thomas Carlyle. Ed. by Charles Eliot
Norton. 2 vols. London and New York, 1886.
Letters of Thomas Carlyle. Ed. by Charles Eliot Norton. 2 vols.
London and New York, 1886.
New Letters of Thomas Carlyle. Ed. by Alexander Carlyle. 2 vols.
London and New York, 1904.
Clarke, Charles and Mary Cowden. Recollections of Writers. London, 1878.
Collins, J. Churton. Byron. In the Quarterly Review, CII, p. 429 ff.
Colvin, Sidney. Keats. (English Men of Letters.) London and New York,
1902.
Dowden, Edward. Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. 2 vols. London, 1886.
The French Revolution and English Literature. New York, 1897.
Transcripts and Studies. London, 1888.
The Edinburgh Review.
Elze, Karl. Lord Byron. A Biography with a Critical Essay on His Place in
Literature. London, 1872.
Fields, J. T. Old Acquaintance. Barry Cornwall and Some of His Friends.
Boston, 1876.
Yesterdays with Authors. Boston, 1885.
Fields, Mrs. J. T. A Shelf of Old Books. In Scribner's Magazine, Vol. III,
pp. 285-305.
Fox Bourne, H. R. English Newspapers. 2 vols. London, 1887.
Galt, John. The Life of Lord Byron. London, 1830.
Gosse, Edmund. From Shakespeare to Pope. Cambridge, 1885.
Hancock, Albert Elmer. The French Revolution and English Poets. New York,
1899.
John Keats. Boston and New York, 1908.
Haydon, Benjamin Robert. Correspondence and Table Talk. Edited with a
Memoir, by His Son, Frederic Wordsworth Haydon. 2 vols. London, 1876.
Life, Letters and Table Talk. (Sans Souci Series.) Ed. by Richard
Henry Stoddard. New York, 1876.
Life of Benjamin Robert Haydon. Ed. by Tom Taylor. 3 vols. London,
1853.
Hazlitt, William. The Spirit of the Age, or Contemporary Portraits. Ed. by
His Son. London, 1858.
The Plain Speaker. 2 vols. London, 1826.
Herford, C. H. The Age of Wordsworth. London, 1901.
Hogg, Thomas Jefferson. Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. 2 vols. London,
1858.
Horne, R. H. A New Spirit of the Age. New York, 1844.
Hunt, James Henry Leigh. Autobiography. Ed. by Roger Ingpen. 2 vols. New
York, 1903.
Correspondence. Ed. by His Eldest Son. 2 vols. London, 1862.
The Descent of Liberty, a Mask. London, 1815.
Essays and Poems. (Temple Library.) Ed. by Reginald Brimley Johnson.
London, 1891.
The Examiner, A Sunday Paper, On Politics, Domestic Economy, and
Theatricals. London. Editor 1808-1821. Contributor 1821-1825.
The Feast of the Poets; with Notes and Other Pieces in Verse, by the
Editor of the Examiner. London, 1814.
Foliage; or Poems Original and Translated. London, 1818.
Imagination and Fancy; or Selections from the English Poets ... and
an Essay in Answer to the Question "What is Poetry?" New York, 1845.
The Indicator and The Companion. 2 vols. London, 1834.
Juvenilia, or a Collection of Poems. Fourth Edition. London, 1803.
The Liberal. 2 vols. London, 1822-1823.
The Literary Examiner. London, 1823.
Leigh Hunt's London Journal. 2 vols. London, 1834-1835.
Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries, with Recollections of the
Author's Life, and of his Visit to Italy. 2 vols. London, 1828.
Men, Women and Books. London, 1847.
Poetical Works. London, 1832.
Poetical Works. Ed. by S. Adams Lee. 2 vols. Boston, 1857.
Leigh Hunt as Poet and Essayist. (Chandos Classics.) Ed. by W. C. M.
Kent, London, 1891.
The Reflector, a Quarterly Magazine, on Subjects of Philosophy,
Politics, and the Liberal Arts. 2 vols. London, 1810-1811.
The Story of Rimini. London, 1810.
Ireland, Alexander. List of the Writings of Leigh Hunt and William
Hazlitt, Chronologically Arranged. London, 1868.
Johnson, R. B. Leigh Hunt. London, 1896.
Jeaffreson, Cordy. The Real Lord Byron. 2 vols. London, 1883.
The Real Shelley. 2 vols. London, 1885.
Keats, John. Poetical Works. Ed. by William T. Arnold. London, 1884.
Poems. (Muses Library.) Ed. by G. Thorn Drury with an Introduction by
Robert Bridges. 2 vols. London and New York, 1896.
The Poetical Works and Other Writings. Edited by Harry Buxton Forman.
4 vols. London, 1883.
Poetical Works. (Golden Treasury Series.) Edited by Francis T.
Palgrave. London and New York, 1898.
Poems of John Keats. Ed. by E. De Selincourt. New York, 1905.
Mac-Carthy, Denis Florence. Shelley's Early Life. London, n. d.
Martineau, Harriet. Autobiography. Ed. by Maria Weston Chapman. 2 vols.
Boston, 1877.
Masson, David. Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and Other Essays. London, 1875.
Meade, W. E. The Versification of Pope in its Relation to the Seventeenth
Century. Leipsic, 1889.
Medwin, Thomas. The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. London, 1847.
Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron. New York and
Philadelphia, 1824.
Milnes, Richard Moncton. (Lord Houghton.) Life, Letters and Literary
Remains of John Keats. 2 vols. London, 1848.
Mitford, Mary Russell. Recollections of a Literary Life. 3 vols. London,
1852.
Monkhouse, Cosmo. Life of Leigh Hunt. ("Great Writers.") London, 1893.
Moore, Thomas. Memoirs, Journal, and Correspondence. Ed. by the Right
Honorable Lord John Russell, M. P. 8 vols. London, 1853.
Morley, John. Critical Miscellanies. London and New York, 1898.
Nichol, John. Byron. (English Men of Letters.) London and New York, 1902.
Nicoll, W. Robertson, and Wise, Thomas J. Literary Anecdotes of the
Nineteenth Century. 2 vols. London.
Noble, J. Ashcroft. The Sonnet in England and Other Essays. London and
Chicago, 1896.
Oliphant, Mrs. Margaret. The Literary History of England in the End of the
Eighteenth and Beginning of the Nineteenth Century. 3 vols. London, 1822.
Patmore, Coventry. Memoirs and Correspondence. Ed. by Basil Champneys. 2
vols. London, 1900.
Patmore, P. G. My Friends and Acquaintance. 3 vols. London, 1854.
Procter, Bryan Waller. (Barry Cornwall.) An Autobiographical Fragment and
Biographical Notes. London, 1877.
The Quarterly Review.
Rossetti, William Michael. Life of John Keats. ("Great Writers.") London,
1887.
Saintsbury, George. Essays in English Literature. (1780-1860.) London,
1891.
A History of Nineteenth Century Literature. (1780-1895.) London and
New York, 1899.
Schipper, Jakob M. Englische Metrik. Bonn, 1881.
Severn, Joseph. Life and Letters. By William Sharp. New York, 1892.
Sharp, William. Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley. (Great Writers.) London,
1887.
Shelley, Percy Bysshe. Works. Ed. by Harry Buxton Forman. 8 vols. London,
1880.
The Complete Poetical Works. (Centenary Edition.) Ed. by George
Edward Woodberry. New York, 1892.
Poetical Works. Ed. by Mrs. Shelley. 4 vols. London, 1839.
Smith, George Barnett. Shelley, A Critical Biography. Edinburgh, 1877.
Trelawney, E. J. Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron.
Boston, 1858.
Records of Shelley, Byron, and the Author. London, 1878.
Woodberry, George Edward. Makers of Literature. New York, 1900.
Studies in Letters and Life. Boston and New York, 1891.
Symonds, John Addington. Shelley. (English Men of Letters.) London and New
York, 1902.
Footnotes:
[1] _Autobiography of Leigh Hunt_, I, p. 34.
[2] _Correspondence of Leigh Hunt_, I, p. 332.
[3] _Autobiography_, I, p. 93. Compare the above quotation with Shelley's
description of his first friendship. (Hogg, _Life of Percy Bysshe
Shelley_, pp. 23-24.)
[4] This early passion for friendship, which developed into a power of
attracting men vastly more gifted than himself, brought about him besides
Byron, Shelley and Keats, such men as Charles Lamb, Robert Browning,
Carlyle, Dickens, Horace and James Smith, Charles Cowden Clarke, Vincent
Novello, William Godwin, Macaulay, Thackeray, Lord Brougham, Bentham,
Haydon, Hazlitt, R. H. Horne, Sir John Swinburne, Lord John Russell,
Bulwer Lytton, Thomas Moore, Barry Cornwall, Theodore Hook, J. Egerton
Webbe, Thomas Campbell, the Olliers, Joseph Severn, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs.
Gaskell, Mrs. Browning and Macvey Napier. Hawthorne, Emerson, James Russel
Lowell and William Story sought him out when they were in London.
[5] _Correspondence_, I, p. 49.
[6] _Ibid._, I, p. 44.
[7] _Memoirs and Correspondence of Coventry Patmore_, ed. Basil Champney,
I, p. 32.
[8] _Life, Letters and Table Talk of Benjamin Robert Haydon_, ed. by
Stoddard, p. 232.
[9] _Correspondence_, I, p. 272.
[10] On once being accused of speculation Hunt replied that he had never
been "in a market of any kind but to buy an apple or a flower." (_Atlantic
Monthly_, LIV, p. 470.) Nor did Hunt admire money-getting propensities in
others. He said of Americans: "they know nothing so beautiful as the
ledger, no picture so lively as the national coin, no music so animating
as the chink of a purse." (_The Examiner_, 1808, p. 721.)
[11] Dickens did Hunt an irreparable injury in caricaturing him as Harold
Skimpole. The character bore such an unmistakable likeness to Hunt that it
was recognized by every one who knew him, yet the weaknesses and vices
were greatly multiplied and exaggerated. Before the appearance of _Bleak
House_, Dickens wrote Hunt in a letter which accompanied the presentation
copies of _Oliver Twist_ and the New American edition of the _Pickwick
Papers_: "You are an old stager in works, but a young one in faith--faith
in all beautiful and excellent things. If you can only find in that green
heart of yours to tell me one of these days, that you have met, in wading
through the accompanying trifles, with anything that felt like a vibration
of the old chord you have touched so often and sounded so well, you will
confer the truest gratification on your old friend, Charles Dickens."
(_Littell's Living Age_, CXCIV, p. 134.)
His apology after Hunt's death was complete, but it could not destroy the
lasting memory of an immortal portrait. He wrote: "a man who had the
courage to take his stand against power on behalf of right--who in the
midst of the sorest temptations, maintained his honesty unblemished by a
single stain--who, in all public and private transactions, was the very
soul of truth and honour--who never bartered his opinion or betrayed his
friend--could not have been a weak man; for weakness is always treacherous
and false, because it has not the power to resist." (_All The Year Round_,
April 12, 1862.)
[12] Godwin, _Enquiry Concerning Political Justice_, Book VIII, Chap. I.
[13] Prof. Saintsbury has very plausibly suggested that a similar attitude
in Godwin, Coleridge and Southey in respect to financial assistance was a
legacy from patronage days. (_A History of Nineteenth Century Literature_,
p. 33.) The same might be said of Hunt.
[14] S. C. Hall, _A Book of Memories of Great Men and Women of the Age,
from Personal Acquaintance_, p. 247.
[15] His feeling on the subject is set forth clearly in a letter where he
is writing of the generosity of Dr. Brocklesby to Johnson and Burke: "The
extension of obligations of this latter kind is, for many obvious reasons,
not to be desired. The necessity on the one side must be of as peculiar,
and, so to speak, of as noble a kind as the generosity on the other; and
special care would be taken by a necessity of that kind, that the
generosity should be equalled by the means. But where the circumstances
have occurred, it is delightful to record them." (Hunt, _Men, Women and
Books_, p. 217.)
[16] _Correspondence_, II, p. 11.
[17] _Ibid._, II, p. 271.
[18] Hunt's work as a political journalist had begun in 1806 with _The
Statesman_, a joint enterprise with his brother. It was very short-lived
and is now very scarce. Perhaps it is due to this rarity that it is not
usually mentioned in bibliographies of Hunt.
[19] H. R. Fox-Bourne, _English Newspapers_, I, p. 376.
[20] _Harper's New Monthly Magazine_, XL, p. 256.
[21] Redding, _Personal Reminiscences of Eminent Men_, p. 184, ff.
[22] Contemporary dailies were the _Morning Chronicle_, _Morning Post_,
_Morning Herald_, _Morning Advertiser_, and the _Times_. In 1813 there
were sixteen Sunday weeklies. Among the weeklies published on other days,
the _Observer_ and the _News_ were conspicuous. In all, there were in the
year 1813, fifty-six newspapers circulating in London. (Andrews, _History
of British Journalism_, Vol. II, p. 76.)
[23] _The Examiner_, January 3, 1808.
[24] On the subject of military depravity _The Examiner_ contained the
following: "The presiding genius of army government has become a perfect
Falstaff, a carcass of corruption, full of sottishness and selfishness,
preying upon the hard labour of honest men, and never to be moved but by
its lust for money; and the time has come when either the vices of one man
must be sacrificed to the military honour of the country, or the military
honour of the country must be sacrificed to the vices of one man." (_The
Examiner_, October 23, 1808.)
[25] _The Examiner_, April 10, 1808.
[26] Maj. Hogan, an Irishman in the English Army, unable to gain promotion
by the customary method of purchase, after a personal appeal to the Duke
of York, commander-in-chief of the army, gave an account of his grievences
in a pamphlet entitled, _Appeal to the Public and a Farewell Address to
the Army_. Before it appeared Mrs. Clarke, the mistress of the Duke of
York, sent Maj. Hogan L500 to suppress it. He returned the money and made
public the offer. The subsequent investigation showed that Mrs. Clarke was
in the habit of securing through her influence with the commander-in-chief
promotion for those who would pay her for it. After these disclosures, the
Duke resigned. _The Examiner_ sturdily supported Maj. Hogan as one who
refused to owe promotion "to low intrigue or petticoat influence." It
likened Mrs. Clarke to Mme. Du Barry and called the Duke her tool.
[27] _The Examiner_, October 8, 1809.
[28] _Ibid._, March 31, 1811.
[29] "Surely it is too gross to suppose that the Prince of Wales, the
friend of Fox, can have been affecting habits of thinking, and indulging
habits of intimacy, which he is to give up at a moment's notice for nobody
knows what:--surely it cannot be, that the Prince Regent, the Whig Prince,
the friend of Ireland--the friend of Fox,--the liberal, the tolerant,
experienced, large-minded Heir Apparent, can retain in power the very men,
against whose opinions he has repeatedly declared himself, and whose
retention in power hitherto he has explicitly stated to be owing solely to
a feeling of delicacy with respect to his father." (_The Examiner_,
February 28, 1812.)
[30] _The Examiner_, March 12, 1812. The contention between Canon Ainger
and Mr. Gosse in respect to Charles Lamb's supposed part in this libel is
set forth in _The Athenaeum_ of March 23, 1889. Mr. Gosse's evidence came
through Robert Browning from John Forster, who first told Browning as
early as 1837 that Lamb was concerned in it.
[31] Mr. Monkhouse says that it was then politically unjustifiable. (_Life
of Leigh Hunt_, p. 88.)
[32] Brougham wrote of his intended defense, "it will be a thousand times
more unpleasant than the libel." For a narration of his friendship for
Hunt, see _Temple Bar_, June, 1876.
[33] _The Examiner_, February 7, 1813.
[34] _The Examiner_, December 10, 1809.
[35] _Correspondence_, I, p. 179.
[36] _The Reflector_, I, p. 5.
[37] Monkhouse, _Life of Leigh Hunt_, p. 79.
[38] Patmore, _My Friends and Acquaintance_, III, p. 101.
[39] The _Edinburgh Review_ of May, 1823, in an article entitled _The
Periodical Press_ ranked Hunt next to Cobbett in talent and _The Examiner_
as the ablest and most respectable of weekly publications, when allowance
had been made for the occasional twaddle and flippancy, the mawkishness
about firesides and Bonaparte, and the sickly sonnet-writing.
[40] Mazzini wrote Hunt: "Your name is known to many of my Countrymen; it
would no doubt impart an additional value to the thoughts embodied in the
League. [International League.] It is the name not only of a patriot, but
of a high literary man and a poet. It would show at once that _natural_
questions are questions not of merely _political_ tendencies, but of
feeling, eternal trust, and Godlike poetry. It would show that poets
understand their active mission down here, and that they are also prophets
and apostles of things to come. I was told only to-day that you had been
asked to be a member of the League's Council, and feel a want to express
the joy I too would feel at your assent." (_Cornhill Magazine_, LXV, p.
480 ff.)
[41] _The Reflector_, I, p. 5.
[42] Hunt accepted the _Monthly Repository_ in 1837 as a gift from W. J.
Fox in order to free it from Unitarian influence. Carlyle, Landor,
Browning and Miss Martineau were contributors.
[43] (1) "Besides, it is my firm belief--as firm as the absence of
positive, tangible proof can let it be (and if we had that, we should all
kill ourselves, like Plato's scholars, and go and enjoy heaven at once),
that whatsoever of just and affectionate the mind of man is made by nature
to desire, is made by her to be realized, and that this is the special
good, beauty and glory of that illimitable thing called space--in her
there is room for everything." _Correspondence_, II, p. 57.
(2) And Faith, some day, will all in love be shown. ("Abraham and the
Fire-Worshipper," _Poetical Works of Leigh Hunt_, 1857, p. 135.)
[44] _A New Spirit of the Age_, II, p. 183.
[45] Hunt wrote two religious books, _Christianism_ and _Religion of the
Heart_. The second, which is an expansion of the first, contains a ritual
of daily and weekly service. For the most part it contains reflections on
duty and service.
[46] _Correspondence_, I, p. 130.
[47] Bryan Waller Proctor (Barry Cornwall), _An Autobiographical Fragment
and Biographical Notes_, p. 197.
[48] _Autobiography_, I, p. 119-120.
[49] _A Morning Walk and View_; _Sonnet on the Sickness of Eliza_.
[50] It had appeared previously in _The Reflector_, No. 4, article 10. In
the separate edition it was expanded and 126 pages of notes were added.
[51] _Poetical Works_, 1832, preface, p. 48.
[52] Byron, _Letters and Journals_, III, p. 28, February 9, 1814.
[53] The same volume contained a preface on the origin and history of
masques and an _Ode for the Spring of 1814_. Byron said of the latter that
the "expressions were _buckram_ except here and there." The masque, he
thought, contained "not only poetry and thought in the body, but much
research and good old reading in your prefatory matter." Byron, _Letters
and Journals_, III, p. 200, June 1, 1815.
[54] See chapter V, p. 19.
[55] Nicoll and Wise, _Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century_, p.
330.
[56]
Who loves to peer up at the morning sun,
With half-shut eyes and comfortable cheek,
Let him, with this sweet tale, full often seek
For meadows where the little rivers run;
Who loves to linger with the brightest one
Of Heaven (Hesperus) let him lowly speak
These numbers to the night, and starlight meek,
Or moon, if that her hunting be begun.
He who knows these delights, and too is prone
To moralize upon a smile or tear,
Will find at once religion of his own,
A bower for his spirit, and will steer
To alleys where the fir-tree drops its cone,
Where robins hop, and fallen leaves are seer.
(_Complete Works of John Keats_, ed by Forman, II, p. 183.)
[57] Lowell said of Hunt: "No man has ever understood the delicacies and
luxuries of the language better than he."
[58] Byron, _Letters and Journals_, III, p. 226, October 22, 1815.
[59] _Ibid._, III, p. 418.
[60] _Ibid._, III, p. 242, October 30, 1815.
[61] _Ibid._, III, p. 267, February 29, 1816.
[62] _Ibid._, IV, p. 237, June 1, 1818.
[63] _Ibid._, IV, pp. 486-487.
[64] Medwin, _Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron_, p. 187.
[65] In the preface to the _Story of Rimini_ (London, 1819, p. 16), Hunt
says that a poet should use an actual existing language, and quotes as
authorities, Chaucer, Ariosto, Pulci, even Homer and Shakespeare. He
thought simplicity of language of greater importance even than free
versification in order to avoid the cant of art: "The proper language of
poetry is in fact nothing different from that of real life, and depends
for its dignity upon the strength and sentiment of what it speaks,
omitting mere vulgarisms and fugitive phrases which are cant of ordinary
discourse."
[66] Byron, _Letters and Journals_, III, p. 418.
[67] Mr. A. T. Kent in the _Fortnightly Review_ (vol. 36, p. 227), points
out that Leigh Hunt in the preface to the _Story of Rimini_, avoided the
mistake of Wordsworth in "looking to an unlettered peasantry for poetical
language," and quotes him as saying that one should "add a musical
modulation to what a fine understanding might naturally utter in the midst
of its griefs and enjoyments." Kent says we have here "two vital points on
which Wordsworth, in his capacity of critic, had failed to insist."
[68] _Autobiography_, II, p. 24.
[69] To be found chiefly in the _Feast of the Poets_.
[70] In 1855, in _Stories in Verse_, Hunt changed his acknowledged
allegiance from Dryden to Chaucer.
[71] Canto, II, ll. 433-440.
[72] E. De Selincourt gives these three last as examples of Hunt's
derivation of the abstract noun from the present participle (_Poems of
John Keats_, p. 577).
[73] De Selincourt notes that these adverbs are usually formed from
present participles. (_Poems of John Keats_, p. 577.)
[74] Byron, _Letters and Journals_, III, p. 418.
[75]
"For ever since Pope spoiled the ears of the town
With his cuckoo-song verses, half up and half down,
There has been such a doling and sameness,--by Jove,
I'd as soon have gone down to see Kemble in love."
(_Feast of the Poets._)
Hunt calls Pope's translation of the moonlight picture from _Homer_ "a
gorgeous misrepresentation" (_Ibid._, p. 35) and the whole translation
"that elegant mistake of his in two volumes octavo." (_Foliage_, p. 32.)
[76] _Feast of the Poets_, p. 38. The same opinions are expressed in _The
Examiner_ of June 1, 1817; in the preface to _Foliage_, 1818.
[77] _Ibid._, p. 56.
[78] P. 23.
[79] Saintsbury, _Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860_, p. 220.
[80] Hunt, _Story of Rimini_, London, 1818, p. 11, 200 lines beginning
with top of page. In the 1742 lines of the poem, there are 47 run-on
couplets and 260 run-on lines. There are 7 Alexandrines and 21 triplets.
In the edition of 1832 the number of triplets has been increased to 26.
There are 46 double rhymes. In a study of the caesura based on the first
200 lines there are 70 medial, 17 double caesuras. The remaining 113 lines
have irregular or double caesura.
[81] Keats, _Lamia_, Bk. I, ll. 1-200. In the 708 lines of _Lamia_, there
are 98 run-on couplets, 144 run-on lines, 39 Alexandrines and 11 triplets.
The caesura is handled with greater freedom than in the _Story of Rimini_.
[82] C. H. Herford, _Age of Wordsworth_, p. 83.
[83] R. B. Johnson, _Leigh Hunt_, p. 94.
[84] _Leigh Hunt as a Poet, Fortnightly Review_, XXXVI: 226.
[85] Sidney Colvin, _Keats_, p. 30.
[86] Garnett, _Age of Dryden_, p. 32.
[87] From Homer, Theocritus, Bion, Moschus, Anacreon, and Catullus.
[88] p. 13.
[89] Hunt, _Correspondence_, I, p. 115.
[90] Byron, _Letters and Journals_, IV, p. 238.
[91] Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke, _Recollections of Writers_, p. 132.
[92] _Ibid._, p. 133.
[93] Hunt, _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries; with Recollections
of the Author's Life and of his Visit to Italy_, p. 247.
[94] _Ibid._, p. 251.
[95] _Ibid._, pp. 246-272.
[96] _Autobiography_, II, pp. 27, 59.
[97] Colvin, _Keats_, p. 222.
[98] This refers to Keats's first published poem, the sonnet _O Solitude,
if I must with thee dwell_, published (without comment) in _The Examiner_
of May 5, 1816.
[99] Colvin, _Keats_, p. 34.
[100] _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_, p. 257.
[101] _Ibid._, pp. 257-258.
[102] Sharp, _Life and Letters of Joseph Severn_, p. 163.
[103] _Works_, I, p. 30.
[104] Mr. Forman, after a systematic search has been able to find no proof
in either direction. (_Works_, III, p. 8.)
[105] _Works_, I, p. 5.
[106] _Foliage_, p. 125.
[107] Colvin, _Keats_, p. 66.
[108] A further account of the disastrous effects of his partisanship will
be found in the discussion of the Cockney School, Ch. V.
[109] The _Century Magazine_, XXIII, p. 706.
[110] Palgrave, _Poetical Works of John Keats_, p. 269.
[111] _Autobiography_, II, p. 266.
[112] _Works_, IV, p. 16.
[113] Haydon and Hunt had originally been very intimate, as is shown by
the letters written by the former from Paris during 1814, and by his
attentions to Hunt in Surrey Gaol. A letter to Wilkie, dated October 27,
1816, gives an attractive portrait of Hunt, and from this evidence it is
inferred that the change in Haydon's attitude came about in the early part
of 1817, and that a small unpleasantness was allowed by him to outweigh a
friendship of long standing. After two weeks spent with Hunt he had
written of him as "one of the most delightful companions. Full of poetry
and art, and amiable humour, we argue always with full hearts on
everything but religion and Bonaparte.... Though Leigh Hunt is not deep in
knowledge, moral metaphysical or classical, yet he is intense in feeling
and has an intellect forever on the alert. He is like one of those
instruments on three legs, which, throw it how you will, always pitches on
two, and has a spike sticking for ever up and ever ready for you. He
"sets" at a subject with a scent like a pointer. He is a remarkable man,
and created a sensation by his independence, his disinterestedness in
public matters; and by the truth, acuteness and taste of his dramatic
criticisms, he raised the rank of newspapers, and gave by his example a
literary feeling to the weekly ones more especially. As a poet, I think
him full of the genuine feeling. His third canto in _Rimini_ is equal to
anything in any language of that sweet sort. Perhaps in his wishing to
avoid the monotony of the Pope school, he may have shot into the other
extreme; and his invention of obscene [sic] words to express obscene
feelings borders sometimes on affectation. But these are trifles compared
with the beauty of the poem, the intense painting of the scenery, and the
deep burning in of the passion which trembles in every line. Thus far as a
critic, an editor and a poet. As a man I know none with such an
affectionate heart, if never opposed in his opinions. He has defects of
course: one of his great defects is getting inferior people about him to
listen, too fond of shining at any expense in society, and love of
approbation from the darling sex bordering on weakness; though to women he
is delightfully pleasant, yet they seem more to handle him as a delicate
plant. I don't know if they do not put a confidence in him which to me
would be mortifying. He is a man of sensibility tinged with morbidity and
of such sensitive organization of body that the plant is not more alive to
touch than he.... He is a composition, as we all are, of defects and
delightful qualities, indolently averse to worldly exertion, because it
harasses the musings of his fancy, existing only by the common duties of
life, yet ignorant of them, and often suffering from their neglect."
(Haydon, _Life, Letters and Table Talk_, ed. R. H. Stoddard, pp. 155-156.)
Haydon said that the rupture came about because Hunt insisted upon
speaking of our Lord and his Apostles in a condescending manner, and that
he rebelled against Hunt's "audacious romancing over the Biblical
conceptions of the Almighty." (Haydon, _Life, Letters and Table Talk_, p.
65.) This view, in the light of Haydon's general unreliability, may be
mere romancing; for Keats, writing on January 13, 1818, gave the following
explanation of the quarrel: "Mrs. H. (Hunt) was in the habit of borrowing
silver from Haydon--the last time she did so, Haydon asked her to return
it at a certain time--she did not--Haydon sent for it--Hunt went to
expostulate on the indelicacy, etc.--they got to words and parted for
ever." (Keats, _Works_, IV, p. 58).
[114] _Works_, IV, p. 20.
[115] Milnes, _Life, Letters and Literary Remains of John Keats_, II, p.
44.
[116] _Works_, IV, p. 114.
[117] _Ibid._, V, p. 142.
[118] _Life, Letters and Table Talk_, p. 208.
[119] _Works_, IV, p. 31.
[120] _Ibid._, IV, p. 60.
[121] _Ibid._, IV, pp. 37-38.
[122] _Ibid._, IV, p. 38, Keats gives his argument in favor of a long
poem.
[123] _Ibid._, IV, p. 38.
[124] _Ibid._, IV, p. 49.
[125] _Ibid._, IV, p. 193.
[126] _Ibid._, IV, pp. 195-196.
[127] _Ibid._, IV, p. 12.
[128] _Ibid._, IV, p. 90.
[129] _Ibid._, I, p. 34.
[130] _Ibid._, V, p. 198.
[131] Haydon attempted also to make trouble between Wordsworth and Hunt,
by telling the former that Hunt's admiration for him was only a "weather
cock estimation" and by insinuations concerning his sincerity in
friendships. (Haydon, _Life, Letters and Table Talk_, p. 197.)
[132] J. Ashcroft Noble, _The Sonnet in England, and Other Essays_, p.
108.
[133] _Autobiography_, II, p. 42.
[134] _Autobiography_, II, p. 44.
[135] _Works_, V, p. 203.
[136] Keats wrote Haydon, "There are three things to rejoice at in this
age The Excursion, Your Pictures, and Hazlitt's depth of taste." (_Works_,
IV, p. 56.)
[137] _Works_, II, p. 187.
[138] _Ibid._, V, p. 116.
[139] _Ibid._, V, p. 180.
[140] _Ibid._, V, p. 175.
[141] _Ibid._, V, p. 174.
[142] That he needed better attention than he could receive in lodgings is
seen from an account of Keats's condition given in _Maria Gisborne's
Journal_ (_Ibid._, V, p. 182), which says that when she drank tea there in
July, Keats was under sentence of death from Dr. Lamb: "he never spoke and
looks emaciated."
[143] _Works_, V, p. 183-184. The quotation follows Keats's punctuation.
[144] _Ibid._, V, p. 185.
[145] _Cornhill Magazine_, 1892.
[146] _Works_, V, p. 194.
[147] _Ibid._, V, p. 193.
[148] _Correspondence_, I, p. 107.
[149] P. 248.
[150] _The Examiner_, June 1st, July 6th, and 13th, 1817.
[151] Lines 181-206.
[152] _Works_, IV, p. 64.
[153] _Lord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries_, p. 257.
[154] May 10, 1820.
[155] Cf. with Poe's sonnet, _Science, true daughter of Old Time thou
art_.
[156] Haydon, _Life, Letters and Table Talk_, p. 201.
[157] In connection with _Hyperion_, it is interesting to note that the
manuscript in Keats's handwriting recently discovered, survived through
the agency of Leigh Hunt. From him it passed into the ownership of his son
Thornton, and later to the sister of Dr. George Bird. It has been
purchased from her by the British Museum. (_Athenaeum_, March 11, 1905.)
[158] This is, of course, a mistake.
[159] For other criticism of the 1820 poems by Hunt, see _Lord Byron and
Some of his Contemporaries_, pp. 258-268.
[160] _I stood tiptoe_, l. 16.
[161] _Ibid._, l. 20.
[162] _Ibid._, l. 81.
[163] _To some Ladies_, l. 15.
[164] _Ibid._, l. 117.
[165] _I stood tiptoe_, l. 215.
[166] _Ibid._, l. 61.
[167] _Calidore_, l. 132. Also pointed out by Mr. Colvin, _Keats_, p. 53.
[168] _To my brother George_, l. 7.
[169] _I stood tiptoe_, l. 144.
[170] Hunt quotes this with approbation, as showing a "human touch."
(_Specimen of an Induction to a Poem_, ll. 13-14.)
[171] _Specimen of an Induction to a Poem_, l. 48.
[172] _Calidore_, l. 66.
[173] _Ibid._, l. 80 ff.
[174] _To ..._, l. 23 ff.
[175] Mr. De Selincourt in _Notes and Queries_, Feb. 4, 1905, dates the
_Imitation of Spenser_ "1813." He does not produce documentary evidence,
however. The discovery of the hitherto unpublished poem, _Fill for me a
brimming bowl_, in imitation of Milton's early poems, dated in the
Woodhouse transcript Aug. 1814, is of considerable interest in determining
the date of Keats's earliest composition of verse. A sonnet _On Peace_
found in the same MS. is a second discovery of an unpublished poem of the
same period.
[176] _Works_, I, p. 26.
[177] _Ibid._, I. p. 16. Mr. W. T. Arnold, _Poetical Works of John Keats_,
London, 1884, has remarked upon the similar use of _so_ by Hunt and Keats.
He compares the "so elegantly" of this passage with the line from _Rimini_
"leaves so finely suit."
[178] _To Charles Cowden Clarke_, l. 88.
[179] _Calidore_, ll. 34-35.
[180] _Story of Rimini_, p. 35.
[181] Colvin, _Keats_, p. 31.
[182] References to Hunt in the sonnets and other poems of 1817 are the
following:
1. "He of the rose, the violet, the spring
The social smile, the chain for Freedom's sake:"
(_Addressed to the Same_ [Haydon].) This sonnet did not appear in 1817,
although it belongs to this period.
2. "... thy tender care
Thus startled unaware
Be jealous that the foot of other wight
Should madly follow that bright path of light
Trac'd by thy lov'd Libertas; he will speak,
And tell thee that my prayer is very meek
* * * * *
Him thou wilt hear."
(_Specimen of an Introduction_, l. 57 ff.) Mrs. Clarke is the authority
that "Libertas" was Hunt.
3. "With him who elegantly chats, and talks--
The wrong'd Libertas."
(_Epistle to Charles Cowden Clarke_, l. 43-44.)
4. "I turn full-hearted to the friendly aids
That smooth the path of honour; brotherhood,
And friendliness the nurse of mutual good.
_The hearty grasp that sends a pleasant sonnet
Into the brain ere one can think upon it_;
The silence when some rhymes are coming out;
And when they're come, the very pleasant rout:
The message certain to be done tomorrow.
'Tis perhaps as well that it should be to borrow
Some precious book from out its snug retreat,
To cluster round it when we next shall meet."
(_Sleep and Poetry._)
Lines 353-404 of the same, nearly one fifth of the entire poem, are a
description of Hunt's library. Mr. De Selincourt calls it "a glowing
tribute to the sympathetic friendship which Keats had enjoyed at the
Hampstead Cottage and an attempt to express in the style of the _Story of
Rimini_ something of the spirit which had informed the _Lines Written
Above Tintern Abbey_." (_Poems of John Keats._ Introduction p. 34.)
(_a_) Of this room Hunt wrote: "Keats's _Sleep and Poetry_ is a
description of a parlour that was mine, no bigger than an old mansion's
closet." _Correspondence_ I, p. 289. See also _Lord Byron and Some of his
Contemporaries_, p. 249.
(_b_) Further description of the same room is to be found in _Shelley's
Letter to Maria Gisborne_, ll. 212-217.
(_c_) Clarke refers to it in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, February, 1874,
and in _Recollections of Writers_, p. 134. In the letter he says that a
bed was made up in the library for Keats and that he was installed as a
member of the household. Here he composed the framework of the poem. Lines
325-404 are "an inventory of the art garniture of the room."
(_d_) The most intresting record in regard to the room is that given by
Mrs. J. T. Fields in a _Shelf of old Books_, who says that her husband saw
the library treasures which had inspired Keats--Greek casts of Sappho,
casts of Kosciusko and Alfred, with engravings, sketches and well-worn
books. Among the books collected by Mr. Fields was a copy of Shelley,
Coleridge and Keats bound together, with an autograph of all three men,
formerly owned by Hunt. The fly leaf "at the back contained the sonnet
written by Keats on the _Story of Rimini_."
[183] The two sonnets were published in _The Examiner_ of September 21,
1817; Keats's had been included previously in the _Poems of 1817_; Hunt's
appeared later in _Foliage_, 1818.
[184] This did not appear in 1817, but belongs to this period. See
_Works_, II, p. 257. For a comparison of these two sonnets with Shelley's
on the same Subject, see Rossetti's _Life of Keats_, p. 110.
[185] _Works_, II, p. 166.
[186] Compare with _A Dream, after Reading Dante's Episode of Paolo and
Francesca_, 1819. (_Works_, III, p. 16.)
[187] A pocket-book given Keats by Hunt and containing many of the first
drafts of the sonnets belonged to Charles Wentworth Dilke. It is still in
the possession of the Dilke family.
[188] For instances of Keats's interest in politics, see _To Kosciusko_,
_To Hope_, ll. 33-36, and scattered references to Wallace, William Tell
and similar characters. Most of these references have already been called
attention to by others.
[189] _Works_, IV, pp. 60-61. The poem follows.
[190] Colvin, _Keats_, p. 107.
[191] _Endymion_, Bk. II, ll. 129-130.
[192] _Ibid._, Bk. IV, l. 863 ff.
[193] _Ibid._, Bk. II, l. 756 ff.
[194] _Ibid._, Bk. II, l. 938 ff.
[195] _Keats_, p. 169.
[196] Stanza 23, l. 7.
[197] _Hero and Leander_ and _Bacchus and Ariadne_, 1819, p. 45.
[198] Mr. W. T. Arnold makes the mistake of thinking that Keats imitated
Hunt's _Gentle Armour_. Mr. Colvin corrects this statement. (Keats,
_Poetical Works_, p. 59.)
[199] (_a_) W. T. Arnold, Keats, _Poetical Works_, p. 128. (_b_) J. Hoops,
_Keats's Jungend und Jugendgedichte_, Englische Studien, XXI, 239. (_c_)
W. A. Read, _Keats and Spenser_.
[200] _Works_, V, p. 121.
[201] This same expression occurs in _Hero and Leander_, 1819, in the
phrase, "Half set in trees and leafy luxury." Keats's dedication sonnet in
which it occurs was written in 1817. Therefore Mr. W. T. Arnold makes a
mistake when he says (in his edition of Keats, p. 129) it was taken direct
from Hunt's poem, although the two separate words are among his favorites
and Keats probably took them from him and combined them.
[202] Mr. Arnold says "delicious" is used sixteen times by Keats. (Keats,
_Poetical Works_, p. 129). He quotes a passage from one of Hunt's prefaces
in which the latter comments on Chaucer's use of the word: "The word
_deliciously_ is a venture of animal spirits which in a modern writer some
critics would pronounce to be too affected or too familiar; but the
enjoyment, and even incidental appropriateness and relish of it, will be
obvious to finer senses." In _Rimini_ this line occurs: "Distils the next
note more deliciously."
[203] Palgrave, _Poetical Works of John Keats_, p. 261, notices Leigh
Hunt's misuse of this word in his review of _I stood tiptoe_, quoted on p.
107. See his use of the same on p. 76. In _Bacchus and Ariadne_ it occurs
in this passage "all luxuries that come from odorous gardens."
[204] This is used in _Hyperion_, II, l. 45. The expression "plashy pools"
occurs in the _Story of Rimini_.
[205] November 11, 1820.
[206] _Life of Percy Bysshe Shelly_, II, p. 36.
[207] _Imagination and Fancy_, p. 231.
[208] _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_, pp. 252-3.
[209] Palgrave, _Poetical Works of John Keats_, p. 274.
[210] _Poetical Works_, 1832, p. 36.
[211] The poem is reported to have brought L100, more than any poem sold
during his lifetime. It is now lost.
[212] Mac-Carthay, who has fully treated this incident, thinks that the
account Hunt gave of the matter many years later is so incoherent as to
indicate that he did not receive the letter until after he met Shelley, or
perhaps not at all. He also points out that two passages in the letter to
Hunt of March 2, 1811, important in their bearing upon Shelley's political
theories at this time, are identical with passages in a letter of February
22 of the same year, addressed to the editor of _The Statesman_,
presumably Finnerty. (_Shelley's Early Life_, pp. 1-106.)
[213] Hancock, _The French Revolution and English Poets_, pp. 50-77.
[214] Letter to Miss Hitchener, June 25, 1811.
[215] G. B. Smith, _Shelley, A Critical Biography_, p. 88.
[216] See the _Letter to Lord Ellenborough_.
[217] Smith, _Shelley, A Critical Biography_, p. 110.
[218] For Shelley's opinion on the coincidence of their political views,
see the last paragraph of the dedication of _The Cenci_.
[219] Hunt, _Autobiography_, II, p. 103.
[220] _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_, p. 176.
[221] _Autobiography_, II, p. 36.
[222] Pp. 122, 123.
[223] December 27, 1812.
[224] II, p. 13.
[225] _Autobiography_, II, p. 27.
[226] _Atlantic Monthly_, February, 1863.
[227] December 8, 1816, Shelley wrote to Hunt: "I have not in all my
intercourse with mankind experienced sympathy and kindness with which I
have been so affected, or which my whole being has so sprung forward to
meet and to return.... With you, and perhaps some others (though in a less
degree, I fear) my gentleness and sincerity find favour, because they are
themselves gentle and sincere: they believe in self-devotion and
generosity because they are themselves generous and self-devoted." (Nicoll
and Wise, _Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century_, p. 328.)
[228] December 15, 1816, Shelley wrote Mary Godwin: Hunt's "delicate and
tender attentions to me, his kind speeches of you, have sustained me
against the weight of the horror of this event." (Dowden, _Life of
Shelley_, II, p. 68.)
[229] (_a_) _The Examiner_, January 26, 1817. (_b_) _Ibid._, February 12,
1817. (_c_) _Ibid._, August 31, 1817. (_d_) Hunt, _Correspondence_, I, p.
114; August 27, 1817.
[230] Shelley said of Horace Smith: "but is it not odd that the only truly
generous person I ever knew, who had money to be generous with, should be
a stockbroker." (Hunt, _Autobiography_, I, p. 211.) See also _Letter to
Maria Gisborne_, ll. 247-253; Forman, _Works of Shelley_, III, p. 225 ff.
[231] _Works of Shelley_, VIII, p. 3; March 22, 1818.
[232] _Works of Shelley_, VIII, p. 141; November 13, 1819.
[233] Professor Masson says that one of Shelley's first acts was to offer
Hunt L100. It is probable he refers to the occasion already discussed.
(_Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats and Other Essays_, p. 112.)
[234] Dowden, _Life of Shelley_, II, p. 61.
[235] Nicoll and Wise, _Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century_, p.
331; December 8, 1816.
[236] _Ibid._, p. 336; August 16, 1817.
[237] Rogers, _Table Talk_, p. 236.
[238] Hunt, _Correspondence_, I, p. 146; September 12, 1819.
[239] Hunt, _Autobiography_, II, p. 36; _Correspondence_, I, p. 126.
[240] Medwin, _Life of Shelley_, II, p. 137.
[241] Mitford, _Life_, I, p. 280. Jeaffreson, _The Real Shelley_, II, p.
357.
[242] Nicoll and Wise, _Literary Anecdotes_, p. 348; April 5, 1820. He
assumed the debt for Hunt's piano as naturally as he did for his own.
Prof. Dowden says that John Hunt expected Shelley to become responsible
for all of his brother's debts. (_Life of Shelley_, II, p. 458.)
[243] Hunt, _Correspondence_, I, p. 158; November 11, 1820.
[244] Nicoll and Wise, _Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century_, p.
342.
[245] See Chapter IV, p. 89.
[246] Dowden, _Life of Shelley_, II, p. 456; also _Works of Shelley_,
VIII, p. 252.
[247] (_a_) Nicoll and Wise, _Literary Anecdotes_, pp. 352, 356. (_b_)
Byron, _Letters and Journals_, VI, p. 11.
[248] Dowden, _Life of Shelley_, II, p. 489.
[249] Hunt, _Autobiography_, II, pp. 36-37. In August, 1819, Hunt
importunes Shelley to give no thought to his affairs (_Correspondence_, I,
p. 136). Hunt wrote Mary Shelley on September 7, 1821: "Pray thank Shelley
or rather do not, for that kind part of his offer relating to the
expenses. I find I have omitted it; but the instinct that led me to do so
is more honorable to him than thanks." (_Correspondence_, I, p. 171.)
[250] Jeaffreson, _The Real Shelley_, II, p. 355.
[251] W. M. Rossetti, _Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley_,
I, p. 75.
[252] _Letters and Journals_, VI, p. 96.
[253] Kent, _Leigh Hunt as Poet and Essayist_, p. 28.
[254] _Autobiography_, II, p. 60.
[255] _Atlantic Monthly_, February, 1863.
[256] _Works of Shelley_, VIII, p. 283. June 19, 1822.
[257] Built by Michaelangelo and situated on the Arno.
[258] _The Liberal_, I, p. 103.
[259] Brandes attributes the inscription to Mary Shelley. (_Main Currents
in Nineteenth Century Literature_, IV, p. 208.)
[260] _Correspondence_, I, p. 269.
[261] After Shelley's death, Mary Shelley decided to remain in Italy in
order to assist with _The Liberal_. She considered Hunt "expatriated at
the request and desire of others," and, in helping him, she thought to
fulfil any obligation that Shelley might have assumed in the scheme. For
her services she received thirty-three pounds. She lived for some time in
the same house with the Hunts after they separated from Lord Byron, but
the arrangement was an unhappy one. Disagreements, beginning with a
misunderstanding concerning the possession of Shelley's heart, dragged
through the winter. Fortunately everything was adjusted before they
separated. July, 1823, she wrote of Hunt: "he is all kindness,
consideration and friendship--all feeling of alienation towards me has
disappeared to its last dregs." (Marshall, _The Life and Letters of Mary
Wollstonecraft Godwin_, London, 1889, II, p. 81.) And again: "But thank
heaven we are now the best friends in the world.... It is a delightful
thing, my dear Jane, to be able to express one's affection upon an old and
tried friend like Hunt, and one so passionately attached to my Shelley as
he was, and is.... He was displeased with me for many just reasons, but he
found me willing to expiate, as far as I could, the evil I had done; his
heart again warmed, and if when I return you find me more amiable, and
more willing to suffer with patience than I was, it is to him that I owe
this benefit." (_Ibid._, II, p. 85.)
[262] Jeaffreson assigns the cause of Hunt's neglect to his ignorance of
the fact that he could suck money out of Shelley. _The Real Shelley_, II,
p. 352.
[263] Mac-Carthay in _Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century_, p.
302.
[264] Shelley was deeply wounded by the attack. He wrote Hunt: "As to what
relates to yourself and me, it makes me melancholy to consider the
dreadful wickedness of the heart which would have prompted such
expressions as those with which the anonymous writer gloats over my
domestic calamities and the perversion of understanding with which he
paints your character." (Nicoll and Wise, _Literary Anecdotes_, p. 340;
December 22, 1818.)
[265] Shelley at first attributed the article in the _Quarterly_ to
Southey on the grounds of his enmity to _The Examiner_ which, Shelley
declared, had been the "crown of thorns worn by this unredeemed Redeemer
for many years." Southey denied the authorship. (Nicoll and Wise,
_Literary Anecdotes_, p. 341; December 22, 1818.)
[266] _The Examiner_, September 26, October 3 and 10, 1819. See also
_Correspondence_, I, pp. 125-126.
[267] _Correspondence_, I, p. 169.
[268] _Ibid._, I, p. 166.
[269] See Hunt, _Correspondence_, I, p. 130.
[270] For Shelley's desire for Hunt's good opinion, see _Works of
Shelley_, VIII, p. 167. Hunt's collection of poems, published during 1818,
under the title of _Foliage_ was dedicated to Shelley: "Had I known a
person more highly endowed than yourself with all the qualities that it
becomes a man to possess, I had selected for this work the ornament of his
name. One more gentle, honorable, innocent and brave; one of more exalted
toleration of all who do and think evil; one who knows better how to
receive, and how to confer a benefit though he must ever confer far more
than he can receive; one of simpler, and in the highest sense of the word,
of purer life and manners I never knew: and I had already been fortunate
in friendships when your name was added to the list."
[271] _Correspondence_, I, p. 153.
[272] _Ibid._, I, p. 154.
[273] _Ibid._, I, p. 179; March 26, 1822.
[274] In an article on the _Suburbs of Genoa and the Country about
London_, pp. 118-119.
[275] Dated August 4, 1823.
[276] The second part of the sketch was in answer to the _Quarterly
Review's_ attack on the _Posthumous Poems_, which Mrs. Shelley, aided by
Hunt, had published in 1824. This account was reworked in 1850 for the
_Autobiography_ and was taken in part for the preface to an edition of
Shelley's works in 1871. Hunt wrote another biographical sketch of Shelley
for S. C. Hall's _Book of Gems_ (p. 40). He gave a fine description of his
physical appearance not often quoted.
[277] It was considered by the _Athaneum_ to be the best part of the book,
and to be the "powerful portrait of a benevolent man." (VI, p. 70.)
[278] Letter to Ollier, February, 1858.
[279] _Atlantic Monthly_, February, 1863.
[280] Forman, _Shelley Library_, p. 113, says that the motto from _Laon
and Cythna_ was added by Hunt.
[281] Pt. 2, p. 37.
[282] P. 217.
[283] _A Shelf of Old Books_, p. 291.
[284] Hunt's _Book of the Sonnet_, which appeared posthumously, contained
a criticism of Shelley's sonnet on _Ozymandyas_ (I, p. 87).
[285] August 13 and 20, 1859.
[286] _The Examiner_, December 28, 1817.
[287] _Ibid._, July 15, 1821.
[288] _Literary Pocket Book_, London, 1819. Shelley's signature was
[Greek: D] and [Greek: S]. See Hunt, _Correspondence_, I, 125.
[289] _Literary Pocket Book_, 1821. (_Works of Shelley_, III, p. 150.)
[290] _Literary Pocket Book_, 1821. (_Works of Shelley_, III, p. 380.)
[291] _Literary Pocket Book_, 1822. (_Works of Shelley_, IV, p. 32.)
[292] _Ibid._, 1822. (_Works of Shelley_, IV, p. 49.)
[293] _Ibid._, 1823. (_Works of Shelley_, IV, p. 63.)
[294] _Ibid._, 1823. (_Works of Shelley_, IV, p. 41.)
[295] _Ibid._, 1823. Mr. Forman thinks that the poem refers to Harriet
Shelley's death and that the date is a disguise. (_Works of Shelley_, III,
p. 146.)
[296] _The Indicator_, December 22, 1819.
[297] Chapter IV.
[298] _Works of Shelley_, VIII, p. 291; November 3, 1819.
[299] _Works of Shelley_, IV, p. 359.
[300] Six months later, December 6, 1812, Hunt addressed a letter to Lord
Ellenborough on the same subject in regard to his own sentence.
[301] June 11, 18, 25, July 2, 9, August 27, September 3, 10, October 1,
8, 15, 22, December 3, 10, 17; in 1821, February 4, August 12, 19, and
September 9. The last three articles were written after the Queen's death.
[302] Keats's _The Cap and Bells_ deals with the same.
[303] Shelley gave directions that the poem should be printed like Hunt's
_Hero and Leander_. _Works of Shelley_, III, p. 101.
[304] _Works of Shelley_, VIII, p. 116; August 15, 1819. The letter
instructs Hunt to throw the poem into the fire or not as he sees fit and
requests him, in preference to Peacock, to correct the proofs. "Can you
take it as a compliment that I prefer to trouble you?"
[305] Forman wrongly attributes the review of Reynolds' _Peter Bell_ in
_The Examiner_ of April 25, 1819, to Hunt and says that this "flippant
notice" by Hunt inspired Shelley's poem. _Ibid._, II, p. 288. Reynolds
asked Keats to request Hunt to review his poem. Keats did it himself.
(Keats, _Works_, III, pp. 246-249.)
[306] _Works of Shelley_, III, p. 235.
[307] Hunt, _Correspondence_, I, p. 116, 141; April 24, 1818, and
September 6, 1819. Cf. with _Works of Shelley_, VIII, p. 121; September 3,
1819. (Editor says dated wrongly.)
[308] _Works of Shelley_, VIII, p. 127; September 27, 1819.
[309] _Correspondence_, I, p. 123; August 4, 1818.
[310]
"You will see Hunt--one of those happy souls
Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom
This world would smell like what it is--a tomb;
Who is what others seem; his room no doubt
Is still adorned by many a cast from Shout,
With graceful flowers tastefully placed about,
And coronals of bay from ribbons hung,
And brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung,--
The gifts of the most learned among some dozens
Of female friends, sisters-in-law and cousins.
And there he is with his eternal puns,
Which beat the dullest brain for smiles, like duns
Thundering for money at a poet's door;
Alas! it is no use to say 'I'm poor!'"
[311] Mr. Forman thinks that it may be part of the original draft of
_Rosalind and Helen_; if so, it is still a very close approximation of
Shelley's opinion of Hunt (_Works of Shelley_, III, p. 403). William
Rossetti and Felix Rabbe think that it was addressed to Hunt.
[312] Wise's edition of _Adonais_, p. 2. London, 1887.
[313] To his wife. _Works of Shelley_, VIII, p. 288; July 4, 1822.
[314] Nicoll and Wise, _Literary Anecdotes_, p. 350; April 5, 1820.
[315] Hunt, _Correspondence_, I, p. 136. Professor George Edward Woodberry
says that Shelley had the "kindest feeling of gratitude and respect ...
but nothing more" towards Hunt. (_Studies in Letters and Life_, p. 153.)
[316] _Ibid._, I, p. 158. November 11, 1820. _Works of Shelley_, VIII, p.
150; November 23, 1819.
[317] Sir Walter Scott has given a good estimate of them: "Our sentiments
agreed a good deal, except on the subject of religion and politics, upon
neither of which I was inclined to believe that Lord Byron entertained
very fixed principles.... On Politics he used sometimes to express a high
strain of what is now called Liberalism; but it appeared to me that the
pleasure that it afforded him as a vehicle of displaying his wit and
satire against individuals in office was at the bottom of his habit of
thinking. At heart I would have termed Byron a patrician on principle."
(Moore, _Letters and Journals of Lord Byron_, I, p. 616.)
[318] Hancock, _The French Revolution and English Poets_, p. 84.
[319] _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_, p. 128.
[320] _Ibid._, p. 1; _Autobiography_, II, p. 85.
[321] _The Real Lord Byron_, I, p. 277.
[322] _Letters and Journals_, III, pp. 29-31. The article was not
published.
[323] Nichol, _Life of Bryon_, p. 84, incorrectly gives 1812 as the date.
[324] _Correspondence_, I, p. 88, May 25, 1813.
[325] _Autobiography_, II, p. 85.
[326] _The Champion_, April 7, 14, 21, 1816.
[327] _Letters and Journals of Lord Byron_, p. 402.
[328] Byron, _Letters and Journals_, II, p. 157, December 1, 1813.
[329] _Ibid._, II, pp. 296-297.
[330] Page 36.
[331] _The Examiner_, April 21, 1816.
[332] _Letters and Journals_, VI, pp. 2-3.
[333] _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_, p. 6.
[334] _Letters and Journals_, III, p. 265.
[335] In 1820 Byron translated the Rimini episode of the _Divine Comedy_.
[336] Trelawney, _Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron_, p.
109.
[337] _Letters and Journals_, V, pp. 590-591.
[338] _Letters and Journals_, V, p. 217. This passage is omitted from the
letter in which it occurs in Moore's _Letters and Journals of Lord Byron_,
II, p. 437.
[339] _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_, p. 8.
[340] Hunt wrongly gives Byron's date of birth as 1791. The article is
accompanied with a woodcut.
[341] See _Blackwood's_, X, pp. 286, 730.
[342] _Letters and Journals_, V, pp. 143-144.
[343] Medwin, _Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron_, p. 186.
[344] Jeaffreson, _The Real Lord Byron_, II, p. 186, says that Byron
through Shelley's mediation could secure Hunt as editor.
[345] _Ibid._, _Letters and Journals of Lord Byron_, II, p. 626.
[346] _Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron_, p. 157.
[347] See p. 103.
[348] _The Real Lord Byron_, II, p. 186.
[349] _Dictionary of National Biography._
[350] _Leigh Hunt as Poet and Essayist_, p. 30.
[351] _Life of Byron_, pp. 266-267.
[352] _Leigh Hunt_, p. 37, note.
[353] _Life of Leigh Hunt_, p. 154.
[354] _The Sonnet in England_, pp. 118-119.
[355] _Works of Shelley_, VIII, p. 255.
[356] _Correspondence_, I, p. 161.
[357] _Autobiography_, II, p. 59.
[358] _Autobiography_, II, p. 59.
[359] After Shelley's meeting with Byron in Switzerland in 1816, before
they met again in Venice, there had been a lapse of two years bridged only
by a not always pleasant correspondence relating to Allegra, Byron's
natural daughter. Shelley occupied the unenviable position of mediator
between him and Jane Clairmont, the child's mother. Yet when the two men
met again in August, 1818, it was at first on the terms recorded in
_Julian and Maddalo_. Byron's influence served as a stimulus to this and
to other poems of the same period. By December of that year Shelley's
opinion of Byron had changed; on the 22d, he wrote to Peacock of _Childe
Harold_ in terms that show how quickly his views could alter: "The spirit
in which it is written, is, if insane, the most wicked and mischievous
insanity that was ever given forth. It is a kind of obstinate and
self-willed folly, in which he hardens himself. I remonstrated with him in
vain on the tone of mind from which such a view of things alone arises....
He (Byron) associates with wretches who seem to have lost the gait and
physiognomy of man, and who do not scruple to avow practices, which are
not only not named, but I believe seldom even conceived in England. He
says he disapproves, but he endures. He is heartily and deeply
discontented with himself; and contemplating in the distorted mirror of
his own thoughts the nature and destiny of man, what can he behold but
objects of contempt and despair? But that he is a great poet, I think the
address to Ocean proves. And he has a certain degree of candour while you
talk to him, but unfortunately it does not outlast your departure. No, I
do not doubt, and for his own sake, I ought to hope, that his present
career must soon end in some violent circumstance." (_Works of Shelley_,
VIII, pp. 80-81.)
From the close of 1818 until 1821, they were again separated. Their
correspondence, as previously, related chiefly to Allegra and was of a
still less agreeable nature. Byron had refused to deal directly with Jane
Clairmont and all communications had to pass through Shelley's hands. In
the interval, as though in retaliation, Byron had believed the Shiloh
story, a fabrication by a nurse of the Shelleys that Jane Clairmont was
Shelley's mistress, but he does not seem to have condemned such a state of
affairs. (_Letters and Journals_, V, p. 86, October, 1820.) Yet he
testified in his letters his great admiration of Shelley's poetry
(_Ibid._, VI, p. 387), and after his death he called him "The best and
least selfish man I ever knew." (_Ibid._, VI, p. 98; August 3, 1822.) But
before 1821, a reversal of the opinion formed in Shelley's mind at the
time of Byron's Venetian excesses, came about. November 11, 1820, he wrote
to Mrs. Hunt: "His indecencies, too, both against sexual nature, and
against human nature in general, sit very awkwardly upon him. He only
affects the libertine; he is, really, a very amiable, friendly and
agreeable man, I hear." (Hunt, _Correspondence_, I, p. 139.) This
corroborates Thornton Hunt's statement that Byron had risen in Shelley's
estimation before 1821 and that otherwise _The Liberal_ would never have
been started. (_Atlantic Monthly_, February, 1863.)
At Byron's invitation they met again in Ravenna. Shelley's letters dated
from there show unstinted admiration of Byron's genius and of the man
himself. He wrote in August, 1821, that he was living a "life totally the
reverse of that which he led at Venice.... (_Works of Shelley_, VIII, p.
211, August 7, 1821.) L. B. is greatly improved in every respect. In
genius, in temper, in moral views, in health, in happiness.... He has had
mischievous passions, but these he seems to have subdued, and he is
becoming what he should be, a virtuous man.... (_Ibid._, VIII, p. 217,
August 10, 1821.) Lord Byron and I are excellent friends, and were I
reduced to poverty, or were I a writer who had no claims to a higher
station than I possess--or did I possess a higher than I deserve, we
should appear in all things as such, and I would freely ask him any
favour. Such is not now the case. The daemon of mistrust and pride lurks
between two persons in our station, poisoning the freedom of our
intercourse. This is a tax and a heavy one, which we must pay for being
human." Of _Don Juan_ he wrote: "It sets him not only above, but far
above, all the poets of the day--every word is stamped with immortality. I
despair of rivalling Lord Byron, as well I may, and there is no other with
whom it is worth contending. (_Ibid._, VIII, p. 219, August 10, 1821.)
During the visit Shelley served as ambassador to the Countess Guiccioli in
persuading her not to go to Switzerland, and in the same capacity to Byron
in the arrangement of Allegra's affairs. It was then settled that Byron
should reside for the winter at Pisa. Shelley had misgivings about such an
arrangement on his own and on Miss Clairmont's account, for he had
previously intended to settle in the same vicinity. He finally decided not
to let it make any difference in his plans. In January, 1822, Shelley
wrote from Pisa to Peacock: "Lord Byron is established here, and we are
his constant companions. No small relief this, after the dreary solitude
of the understanding and the imagination in which we passed the first
years of our expatriation, yoked to all sorts of miseries and
discomforts.... if you before thought him a great poet, what is your
opinion now that you have read _Cain_?" (_Works of Shelley_, VIII, p. 249;
January 11, 1822.) During the same month he wrote to John Gisborne: "What
think you of Lord Byron now? Space wondered less at the swift and fair
creations of God, when he grew weary of vacancy, than I at this spirit of
an angel in the mortal paradise of a decaying body." (_Ibid._, VIII, p.
251, January, 1822.)
A letter to Leigh Hunt gives the first intimation of the return of the
ill-feeling toward Byron: "Past circumstances between Lord B. and me
render it _impossible_ that I should accept any supply from him for my own
use, or that I should ask for yours if the contribution could be supposed
in any manner to relieve me, or to do what I could otherwise have done."
(_Works of Shelley_, VIII, p. 253, January 25, 1822.) This referred to
more entanglements with Byron about Allegra. Shelley wrote to Jane
Clairmont: "It is of vital importance, both to me and yourself, to Allegra
even, that I should put a period to my intimacy with Lord Byron, and that
without eclat. No sentiments of honour and of justice restrain him (as I
strongly suspect) from the basest suspicion, and the only mode in which I
could effectually silence him I am reluctant (even if I had proof) to
employ during my father's life. But for your immediate feelings, I would
suddenly and irrevocably leave the country which he inhabits, nor even
enter it but as an enemy to determine our differences without words."
(_The Nation_, XLVIII, p. 116.)
[360] _Works of Shelley_, VIII, p. 258.
[361] _Ibid._, VIII, p. 235, August 26, 1821.
[362] _Correspondence_, I, p. 172, September 21, 1821.
[363] _Ibid._, I, p. 174, November 16, 1821.
[364] Byron, _Letters and Journals_, IV, p. 129, June 4, 1817.
[365] _Ibid._, VI, pp. 117, 122, 127, 129, 134, 138, 158.
[366] _Ibid._, VI, p. 156.
[367] In 1814 Moore showed considerable pride in being included as one of
the four poets to sup with Apollo in the _Feast of the Poets_ and said
that he was "particularly flattered by praise from Hunt, because he is one
of the most honest and candid men" that he knew. (_Memoirs, Journal and
Correspondence_, II, p. 159.) In 1819 Hunt had urged upon Perry, the
editor of the _Morning Chronicle_, the necessity of a public subscription
for Moore. (_Ibid._, II, p. 340). An unfavorable review of Moore's
political principles in _The Examiner_ during the same year may have done
something to bring about the change in Moore's feelings, though he was
eulogized in a later issue of January 21, 1821.
[368] B. W. Procter, _An Autobiographical Fragment_, p. 153.
[369] _Letters and Journals of Lord Byron_, II, p. 583.
[370] _Ibid._, II, p. 582.
[371] _Ibid._, II, p. 584.
[372] Jeaffreson, _The Real Lord Byron_, II, p. 188.
[373] _Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron_, p. 111.
[374] Nicoll, _Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century_, p. 353,
March, 1822.
[375] _Ibid._, p. 356.
[376] _Fortnightly_, XXIX, p. 850.
[377] _Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron_, p. 112.
[378] _Works of Shelley_, VIII, p. 288-289.
[379] _Life of Shelley_, II, p. 459.
[380] _Autobiography_, II, p. 94.
[381] _Correspondence_, I, p. 86.
[382] Monkhouse, _Life of Leigh Hunt_, p. 156.
[383] Hunt refuted the statement that Byron had walled off part of his
dwelling and furnished it handsomely. (_Lord Byron and Some of His
Contemporaries_, p. 14 ff.)
[384] _Works of Shelley_, VIII, pp. 242, 253.
[385] Nicoll and Wise, _Literary Anecdotes of the Nineteenth Century_, p.
342, December 22, 1818.
[386] _Works of Shelley_, VIII, p. 286.
[387] _Correspondence_, I, p. 190.
[388] _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_, p. 18.
[389] _Ibid._, p. 18.
[390] "I could always procure what I wanted from Lord Byron, and living
here is divinely cheap." (_Correspondence_, I, p. 198, November 7, 1822.)
[391] _Life of Byron_, p. 242.
[392] _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_, p. 6.
[393] _Works of Shelley_, VIII, p. 257.
[394] She used no tact in her dealings with Lord Byron. She let him see
that she had no respect for rank or titles. She even went beyond the
limits of courtesy in her remarks to him. On Byron's saying, "What do you
think, Mrs. Hunt? Trelawny had been speaking of my morals! What do you
think of that?" "It is the first time," said Mrs. Hunt, "I ever heard of
them." (_Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_, p. 27). Of his
portrait by Harlowe she said "that it resembled a great schoolboy, who had
had a plain bun given him, instead of a plum one," a facetious speech
indiscreetly repeated by Hunt to Byron.
[395] _Letters and Journals_, VI, p. 124.
[396] _Ibid._, VI, pp. 119-120. Hunt's view was quite different. Byron
was, he thought, intimidated "out of his reasoning" by his children and
their principles. (_Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_, p. 28.)
[397] _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_, p. 32.
[398] _Ibid._, p. 30.
[399] _Letters and Journals_, VI, pp. 157, 167.
[400] _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_, p. 64.
[401] Medwin, _Conversations of Lord Byron_, p. 58.
[402] Monkhouse, _Life of Leigh Hunt_, pp. 64-65.
[403] II, pp. 145-146.
[404] _Autobiography_, II, p. 24.
[405] _Correspondence_, I, p. 188, July 8, 1822. Letter to his
sister-in-law.
[406] _Letters and Journals_, VI, p. 97, July 12, 1822.
[407] _Recollections of the Last Days of Shelley and Byron_, I, p. 174.
[408] _Correspondence_, I, p. 192. October (?), 1822.
[409] _Letters and Journals_, VI, p. 160. January 8, 1823.
[410] _Ibid._, VI, pp. 171-173.
[411] _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_, pp. 50, 63.
[412] _Ibid._, p. 48.
[413] "_Blackwood's Magazine_ overflowed, as might be expected, with
ten-fold gall and bitterness; the _John Bull_ was outrageous; and Mr.
Jerdan black in the face at this unheard-of and disgraceful union. But who
would have supposed that Mr. Thomas Moore and Mr. Hobhouse, those staunch
friends and partisans of the people, should also be thrown into almost
hysterical agonies of well-bred horror at the coalition between their
noble and ignoble acquaintance, between the Patrician and the
'Newspaper-Man'? Mr. Moore darted backwards and forwards from
Cold-Bath-Fields' Prison to the Examiner-Office, from Mr. Longman's to Mr.
Murray's shop, in a state of ridiculous trepidation, to see what was to be
done to prevent this degradation of the aristocracy of letters, this
indecent encroachment of plebeian pretensions, this undue extension of
patronage and compromise of privilege. The Tories were shocked that Lord
Byron should grace the popular side by his direct countenance and
assistance--the Whigs were shocked that he should share his confidence and
councils with any one who did not unite the double recommendations of
birth and genius--but themselves!" (Hazlitt, _The Plain Speaker_, II, p.
437 ff.)
[414] _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_, p. 52.
[415] Galt in his _Life of Byron_ says: "Whether Mr. Hunt was or was not a
fit co-partner for one of his Lordship's rank and celebrity, I do not
undertake to judge; but every individual was good enough for that vile
prostitution of his genius, to which in an unguarded hour, he submitted
for money." (P. 244.)
[416] _The Literary Gazette_ of October 19, 1822, was one of the notable
opponents.
[417] _Life of Byron_, p. 239.
[418] _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_, p. 52.
[419] _Ibid._, p. 53.
[420] Byron, _Letters and Journals_, VI, p. 183.
[421] _Ibid._, VI, p. 124.
[422] _Ibid._, VI, p. 174, p. 182. (Letters to Mrs. Shelley.)
[423] _Ibid._, VI, p. 124.
[424] _Ibid._, V, p. 157, December 25, 1822.
[425] _Ibid._, VI, pp. 167-168.
[426] _Ibid._, V, p. 588.
[427] Lady Blessington, _Conversations of Lord Byron_, p. 77.
[428] _Letters and Journals_, VI, pp. 182-183, April 2, 1823.
[429] Hunt's only means of support were the income from his contributions
to _Colburn's New Monthly Magazine_, from the _Wishing Cap Papers_ in _The
Examiner_, and an annuity of L100. (_Correspondence_, I, p. 227.)
[430] _Correspondence_, I, p. 233-234.
[431] _Correspondence_, I, p. 228. See Hazlitt's account of Hunt in Italy
given in a letter from Haydon to Miss Mitford. (Haydon, _Life, Letters and
Table Talk_, pp. 223-225.)
[432] Moore, _Memoirs_, IV, p. 220; V, p. 182.
[433] _Letters and Journals_, VI, p. 174, 1823.
[434] _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_, preface, p. 3.
[435] Clarke, _Recollection of Writers_, p. 230.
[436] But compare Hunt's own remarks on p. 40.
[437] The biographers of the two men have taken various attitudes toward
the value of _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_. Galt says that
the pains Hunt took to elaborate faults of Byron make one think Hunt was
treated according to his deserts, and that the troubles he labored under
may have caused him to misapprehend Byron's jocularity for sarcasm, and
caprice for insolence. (_Life of Byron_, p. 260.) Garnett considers the
book a "corrective of merely idealized estimates of Lord Byron," and its
"reception more unfavorable than its deserts." (_Encyclopaedia Britannica_,
"Byron," Ninth Edition.) Nichol thinks that while the book was prompted by
uncharitableness and egotism, Byron's faults were only slightly magnified:
that the poetic insight, the cosmopolitan sympathy and courage of Hunt
have given a view that nothing else could have done. (_Life of Byron_, p.
165.) R. B. Johnson thinks that it was a correct estimate written in
self-justification. Undoubtedly it should not have come from Hunt, yet if
it had not been written Hunt would not have been defended nor Byron so
well known. He says there is "no reason to regret any part of the affair
but the heated and persistent abuse with which one of the most sensitive
and humane of men has been loaded on account of it." (_Leigh Hunt_, p.
50.) Noble says that "Byron's friends met unpleasant truths by still more
unpleasant falsehoods." (_The Sonnet in England_, p. 115.) Alexander
Ireland, says the book was the great blunder of Hunt's life, "ought not to
have been written, far less published." (_Dictionary of National
Biography._)
[438] _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_, p. 89.
[439] _Ibid._, pp. 20-21.
[440] Byron, _Letters and Journals_, II, p. 208.
[441] _Ibid._, II, p. 461.
[442] Thornton Hunt, in his edition of his father's _Correspondence_,
1862, in this connection defended Byron, and credited him with "a strong
sympathy with all that was beautiful and generous, with a desire to do
right,
[443] P. 14. For an apology made six years earlier see a letter from Hunt
to Thomas Moore. (_Correspondence_, II, p. 38.)
[444] Hunt, _A Jar of Honey from Mt. Hybia_, p. 155.
[445] II, pp. 90-93.
[446] _Charles Lamb and Some of His Companions_ in the _Quarterly Review_
of January, 1867.
[447] _A New Spirit of the Age_, p. 182.
[448] Near the close of his life Hunt wrote: "The jests about London and
the Cockneys did not affect me in the least, as far as my faith was
concerned. They might as well have said that Hampstead was not beautiful,
or Richmond lovely; or that Chaucer and Milton were Cockneys when they
went out of London to lie on the grass and look at the daisies. The
Cockney School is the most illustrious in England; for, to say nothing of
Pope and Gray, who were both veritable Cockneys, 'born within the sound of
Bow Bell,' Milton was so too; and Chaucer and Spenser were both natives of
the city. Of the four greatest English poets, Shakespeare only was not a
Londoner." (_Autobiography_, II, p. 197.)
[449] _Recollections of Writers_, p. 19. Other accounts of these suppers
are to be found in Hazlitt's _On the Conversations of Authors_; in the
works dealing with Charles Lamb; and in the _Cornhill Magazine_, November,
1900.
[450] _The Life of Mary Russell Mitford_. Edited by A. J. K. L'Estrange,
New York, 1870, I, p. 370, November 12, 1819.
[451] Sharp, _The Life and Letters of Joseph Severn_, p. 33.
[452] Notes, pp. 57-61.
[453] _Ibid._, pp. 62-68.
[454] Other controversies, such as the one with Antoine Dubost, show
Hunt's aggressiveness. Dubost had sold a painting of Damocles to his
patron, a Mr. Hope. The latter became convinced that the author was an
imposter and tore the signature from the picture. In retaliation Dubost
painted and exhibited _Beauty and the Beast_, a caricature of the whole
incident. _The Examiner_ accused him of forgery and rank ingratitude. Hunt
does not seem to have had any particular proof or knowledge on the
subject, yet he employed scathing denunciation in writing of it. Dubost
replied and asserted that Hunt was Hope's hireling, and that he had
"ransacked the whole calendar of scurrility, and hunted for nick-names
through all the common places of blackguardism." (Dubost, _An Appeal to
the Public against the Calumnies of the Examiner_, London, n. d., p. 9.)
[455] He undertook a vindication of the Cockney School in a series of four
articles, in which he pointed out the "mean insincerity," the "vulgar
slander," the "mouthing cant," the "shabby spite," the falsehoods and the
recantations of Blackwood's. The description of the conditions, under
which Scott pictured the articles of his enemies to have been written,
smacks of the mocking humor of _Blackwood's_ itself: "a redolency of
Leith-ale, and tobacco smoke, which floats about all the pleasantry in
question,--giving one the idea of its facetious articles having been
written on the slopped table of a tavern parlour in the back-wynd, after
the _convives_ had retired, and left the author to solitude, pipe-ashes,
and the dregs of black-strap."
[456] Published in Edinburgh in 1820 and signed by "An American
Scotchman."
[457] Published in Newcastle in 1821.
[458] The School was thus described in Blackwood's: "The chief
constellations, in this poetical firmament, consist of led captains, and
clerical hangers-on, whose pleasure, and whose business, it is, to
celebrate in tuneful verse, the virtues of some angelic patron, who keeps
a good table, and has interest with the archbishop, or the India House.
Verily they have their reward." In other words this group was composed of
diners-out or parasites, and sycophants for livings and military
appointments.
[459] Published in London, 1824.
[460] Published in London also in 1824.
[461] Keats, _Works_, IV, p. 66.
[462] C. C. Clarke, _Recollections of Writers_, p. 147.
[463] Keats, _Works_, IV, p. 66.
[464] _Life of Benjamin Robert Haydon_, p. 349.
[465] Dowden, _Life of Shelley_, II, p. 302.
[466] I, p. 133.
[467] _Keats_, p. 120.
[468] _Life in Poetry: Law in Taste_, pp. 21-23.
[469] _Age of Wordsworth_, p. 58.
[470] _Blackwood's_, November, 1820.
[471] _Ibid._, May, 1821.
[472] _Quarterly_, April, 1822.
[473] _Ibid._, January, 1823.
[474] _Blackwood's_, April, 1819.
[475] _Life, Letters and Table Talk of Benjamin Robert Haydon_, p. 69.
[476] _Blackwood's_, May, 1823, pp. 558-566.
[477] _Memoirs and Correspondence of Coventry Patmore_, I, p. 23.
[478] _Letters and Journals_, V, p. 588.
[479] _St. James Magazine_, XXXV, p. 387 ff.
[480] _Blackwood's_, December, 1821.
[481] _Letters and Journals_, V, pp. 587-590. March 25, 1821.
[482] _Ibid._, V, pp. 362-363. September 12, 1821.
[483] _Letters of Timothy Tickler, Esq._, July, 1823.
[484] September, 1824.
[485] Hunt, _Correspondence_, I, p. 136.
[486] Daniel Maclise, _A Gallery of Illustrious Literary Characters_
(1830-1838). London, n. d., p. 132.
[487] William Dorling, _Memoirs of Dora Greenwell_, London, 1885, p. 75.
[488] _Epistle to Barnes._
[489] This accusation has been made still more recently by Mr. Palgrave,
who speaks of the "slipshod morality of _Rimini_ and _Hero_." _Poetical
Works of John Keats_, p. 263.
[490] In 1844, however, he refashioned the whole poem, now representing
Giovanni as deformed and as the murderer of his wife and brother, whereas
in the version of 1816 Paolo had been slain in a duel and Francesca had
died of grief. In 1855, he made a second change and went back to the 1816
version. The duel he preserved in the fragment, _Corso and Emilia_. Hunt's
translation of Dante's episode appeared in _Stories of Verse_, 1855. In
1857 he made a third change and restored the version of 1844.
[491] The editor of _Blackwood's_ in a letter dated April 20, 1818,
offered space to P. G. Patmore for a favourable critique of Hunt's poetry,
reserving to himself the privilege of answering such an article. He stated
further that if Hunt had employed less violent language towards the
reviewer of _Rimini_ he might have been given a friendly explanation.
_Memoirs and Correspondence of Coventry Patmore_, II, p. 438.
[492] This charge was renewed in a review of Hunt's _Autobiography_ in
1850 in the _Eclectic Review_, XCII, p. 416.
[493] Byron greatly resented Southey's article: "I am glad Mr. Southey
owns that article on _Foliage_ which excited my choler so much. But who
else could have been the author? Who but Southey would have had the
baseness, under the pretext of reviewing the work of one man, insidiously
to make it nest work for hatching malicious calumnies against others?... I
say nothing of the critique itself on _Foliage_; with the exception of a
few sonnets, it was unworthy of Hunt. But what was the object of that
article? I repeat, to villify and scatter his dark and devilish
insinuation against me and others." (Medwin, _Conversations of Lord
Byron_, p. 102.) Again Byron wrote of Southey in 1820: "Hence his
quarterly overflowings, political and literary, in what he has termed
himself 'the ungentle craft,' and his special wrath against Mr. Leigh
Hunt, not withstanding that Hunt has done more for Wordsworth's reputation
as a poet (such as it is), than all the Lakers could in their interchange
of praises for the last twenty-five years." (_Letters and Journals_, V, p.
84.)
[494] _London Magazine_, October, 1823.
[495] September, 1823.
[496] Reprinted in the _Museum of Foreign Literature_, XII, p. 568.
[497] August, 1834, XXVI, p. 273.
[498] C. C. Clarke, _Recollections of Writers_, p. 244. The year in which
the letter was written is not given, but it must fall within the years
1833-1840, the period of Hunt's residence at Chelsea.
[499] _The Victorian Age_, I, pp. 94-101.
[500] Hunt, _Autobiography_, II, p. 267.
[501] _Critical, Historical and Miscellaneous Essays_, New York and
Boston, 1860, IV, p. 350.
[502] The first preface to _Endymion_ was rejected by Keats on the advice
of his friends who thought that it was in the vain yet deprecating tone of
Hunt's prefaces. To this charge Keats replied: "I am not aware that there
is anything like Hunt in it (and if there is, it is my natural way, and I
have something in common with Hunt)." The second preface justifies the
charge.
[503] _London Journal_, January 21, 1835.
[504] Of Southey's attack on Hunt and others in May, 1818, Keats wrote: "I
have more than a laurel from the Quarterly Reviewers, for they have
smothered me in 'Foliage.'" (_Works_, IV, p. 115.)
[505] Shelley wrote also a letter to the _Quarterly Review_ remonstrating
against its treatment of Keats but the letter was never sent. (Milnes,
_Life, Letters and Literary Remains of John Keats_, I, p. 208 ff.)
[506] In _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_, Hunt states that he
informed Byron of his mistake and received a promise that it would be
altered, but that the rhyme about _article_ and _particle_ was too good to
throw away (p. 266).
[507] Just before leaving England, Keats with Hunt visited the house where
Tom had died. He told Hunt in _this_ connection that he was "dying of a
broken heart." (_Literary Examiner_, 1823, p. 117.)
[508] _Works_, IV, pp. 42-43, 169-171, 174, 177, 194; V, pp. 27, 29.
[509] _Atlantic Monthly_, XI, p. 406.
[510] October 11, 1818. It included two reprints from other papers. The
first was a letter taken from the _Morning Chronicle_ signed J. S. It
predicted that if Keats would "apostatise his friendship, his principles,
and his politics (if he have any) he may even command the approbation of
the _Quarterly Review_." This was followed by extracts from an article by
John Hamilton Reynolds in the _Alfred Exeter Paper_ praising Keats for his
power of vitalizing heathen mythology and for his resemblance to Chapman
and calling Gifford "a Lottery Commissioner and Government Pensioner" who
persecuted Keats by "intrigue of literature and contrivance of political
parties."
[511] Dante Gabriel Rossetti suggests this possibility in a letter to Mr.
Hall Caine. (Caine, _Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti_, p. 179.)
[512] _Cobwebs of Criticism_, p. 137.
[513] _Autobiography_, II, p. 43.
[514] See p. 50 ff.
[515] _Imagination and Fancy_, p. 230.
[516] Dowden, _Life of Shelley_, II, p. 274.
[517] Other hostile reviews of _The Cenci_ appeared in the _Literary
Gazette_ of April 1, 1820; the _Monthly Magazine_ of the same month; and
the _London Magazine_ of May of the same year.
[518] _Blackwood's_, January, 1822.
[519] Alexander Ireland has pointed out curious correspondences in the
lives and intrests of Hazlitt and Hunt. (_Memoir of Hazlitt_, pp.
474-476.)
[520] _Quarterly_, May, 1818.
[521] _Ibid._, December, 1818.
[522] _Ibid._, July, 1819.
[523] _Ibid._, October, 1821.
[524] Birrell, _William Hazlitt_, New York, 1902, p. 147.
[525] _The Examiner_ of March 7 and 14, 1819, contained extracts from the
_Letter_ and comments by Hunt upon this "quint-essential salt of an
epistle," as he called it. Lamb's _Letter to Southey_, already referred
to, contained a defense of Hazlitt as well as of Hunt.
[526] February, 1818-April, 1819.
[527] August, 1822.
[528] August, 1823; October, 1823.
THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
STUDIES IN ENGLISH
Joseph Glanvill
_A Study in English Thought and Letters of the Seventeenth Century_
By FERRIS GREENSLET, Ph.D.,
Cloth, 12mo pp. xi + 235 $1.50 _net_
The Elizabethan Lyric
By JOHN ERSKINE, Ph.D.,
Cloth, 12mo pp. xvi + 344 $1.50 _net_
Classical Echoes in Tennyson
By WILFRED P. MUSTARD, Ph.D.,
Cloth, 12mo pp. xvi + 164 $1.25 _net_
Byron and Byronism in America
By WILLIAM ELLERY LEONARD, Ph.D.,
Paper, 8vo pp. vi + 126 $1.00 _net_
Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature
By MARGARET BALL, Ph.D.,
Paper, 8vo pp. x + 188 $1.00 _net_
The Early American Novel
By LILLIE DEMING LOSHE, Ph.D.,
Paper, 8vo pp. vii + 131 $1.00 _net_
Studies in New England Transcendentalism
By HAROLD C. GODDARD, Ph.D.,
Paper, 8vo pp. x + 217 $1.00 _net_
A Study of Shelley's Drama "The Cenci"
By ERNEST SUTHERLAND BATES, Ph.D.,
Paper, 8vo pp. ix + 103 $1.00 _net_
Verse Satire in England before the Renaissance
By SAMUEL MARION TUCKER, Ph.D.,
Paper, 8vo pp. xi + 245 $1.00 _net_
The Accusative with Infinitive and Some Kindred Constructions in English
By JACOB ZEITLIN, Ph.D.,
Paper, 8vo pp. viii + 177 $1.00 _net_
Government Regulation of the Elizabethan Drama
By VIRGINIA CROCHERON GILDERSLEEVE, Ph.D.,
Cloth, 8vo pp. vii + 259 $1.25 _net_
The Stage History of Shakespeare's King Richard the Third
By ALICE I. PERRY WOOD, Ph.D.,
Cloth, 8vo pp. xi + 186 $1.25 _net_
The Shaksperian Stage
By VICTOR E. ALBRIGHT, Ph.D.,
Cloth, 8vo pp. xii + 194 $1.50 _net_
Thomas Carlyle as a Critic of Literature
By FREDERICK W. ROE, Ph.D.,
Cloth, 8vo pp. xi + 152 $1.25 _net_
THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Columbia University in the City of New York
The Press was incorporated June 8, 1893, to promote the publication of the
results of original research. It is a private corporation, related
directly to Columbia University by the provisions that its Trustees shall
be officers of the University and that the President of Columbia
University shall be President of the Press.
The publications of the Columbia University Press include works on
Biography, History, Economics, Education, Philosophy, Linguistics, and
Literature, and the following series:
Columbia University Biological Series.
Columbia University Studies in Classical Philology.
Columbia University Studies in Comparative Literature.
Columbia University Studies in English.
Columbia University Geological Series.
Columbia University Germanic Studies.
Columbia University Indo-Iranian Series.
Columbia University Contributions to Oriental History and Philology.
Columbia University Oriental Studies.
Columbia University Studies in Romance Philology and Literature.
Blumenthal Lectures.
Carpentier Lectures.
Hewitt Lectures.
Jesup Lectures.
Catalogues will be sent free on application.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, Agents
64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
Transcriber's Notes:
Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
Pages 118, 119, and 120 are numbered consecutively in the text, but there
appears to be a page or more missing from the original.
Footnote 442 (on page 118) ends with a comma in the original.
Some quotes are opened with marks but are not closed. Obvious errors
have been silently closed while those requiring interpretation have
been left open.
Punctuation has been corrected without note.
The following misprints have been corrected:
"Francesea" corrected to "Francesca" (page 21)
"everthing" corrected to "everything" (page 48)
"Shelly" corrected to "Shelley" (page 68)
"wordly" corrected to "worldly" (page 70)
"followd" corrected to "followed" (page 90)
"Progess" corrected to "Progress" (page 129)
"ever" corrected to "even" (page 138)
"Ambrosianae" corrected to "Ambrosianae" (page 152)
"beween" corrected to "between" (footnote 30)
"Cynthia" corrected to "Cythna" (footnote 180)
"Nineteen" corrected to "Nineteenth" (foonote 259)
"Work" corrected to "Works" (footnote 313)
"elese" corrected to "else" (footnote 437)
Other than the corrections listed above, inconsistencies in spelling and
hyphenation have been retained from the original.