Leigh Hunt's Relations with Byron, Shelley and Keats Part 10

That alone decides fate; and from that moment he is set upon, pulled in pieces, and hunted into his grave by the whole venal crew in full cry after him. It was crime enough that he dared to accept praise from so disreputable a quarter."

In a letter from Hunt in Italy to _The Examiner_, July 7, 1822, an inquiry is made why Mr. Gifford has never noticed Keats's last volume: "that beautiful volume containing _Lamia_, the story from Boccaccio, and that magnificent fragment _Hyperion_?" _Blackwood's_ of August replied to these two defenses in a tirade of twenty-two pages against the _Edinburgh Review_, Hazlitt, and Hunt. The _Noctes Ambrosianae_ of October continued in the same strain and, though the grave should have protected Keats from such banter, revived the old allusions to the apothecary and his pills.

In self defense against the charge, that its attacks and those of the _Quarterly_ had broken Keats's heart, _Blackwood's_ in January, 1826, said that it alone had dealt with Keats, Sh.e.l.ley and Procter with "_common sense_ or _common feeling_"; that, seeing Keats in the road to ruin with the c.o.c.kneys, it had "tried to save him by wholesome and severe discipline--they drove him to poverty, expatriation and death." The most remarkable part of this remarkable justification is this: "Keats outhunted Hunt in a species of emasculated pruriency, that, although invented in Little Britain, looks as if it were the prospect of some imaginative Eunuch's muse within the melancholy inspiration of the Haram" (_sic_).

In March, 1828, in a review of _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_, the _Quarterly_ seized the opportunity to revert to the author's friendship for Keats in its old hostile manner; and, in a criticism of Coleridge's poems in August, 1834, to speak of his "dreamy, half-swooning style of verse criticised by Lord Byron (in language too strong for print) as the fatal sin of Mr. John Keats." Finally in March, 1840, in _Journalism in France_, there is another feeble effort at defense; a resentment of the "twaddle" against the _Quarterly_ "when they had the misfortune to criticise a sickly poet, who died soon afterwards, apparently for the express purpose of dishonoring us."

One of Hunt's utterances in regard to Keats and his critics disposes finally of the matter: "his fame may now forgive the critics who disliked his politics, and did not understand his poetry."[515]

From Italy Sh.e.l.ley wrote to Peac.o.c.k:

"I most devoutly wish I were living near London.... My inclination points to Hampstead; but I do not know whether I should not make up my mind to something more completely suburban. What are mountains, trees, heaths, or even glorious and ever beautiful sky, with such sunsets as I have seen at Hampstead, to friends? Social enjoyment, in some form or other, is the Alpha and the Omega of existence. All that I see in Italy--and from my tower window I now see the magnificent peaks of the Apennine half enclosing the plain--is nothing. It dwindles into smoke in the mind, when I think of some familiar forms of scenery, little perhaps in themselves, over which old remembrances have thrown a delightful colour."[516]

The attacks of the _Quarterly_ of May, 1818, on Sh.e.l.ley's private life and of April, 1819, on the _Revolt of Islam_, and the reply of _The Examiner_, have already been discussed on p. 77 of the third chapter. The a.s.sault was renewed in October, 1821. The dominating characteristic of Sh.e.l.ley's poetry is said to be "its frequent and total want of meaning." In _Prometheus Unbound_ there were said to be many absurdities "in defiance of common sense and even of grammar ... a mere jumble of words and heterogeneous ideas, connected by slight and accidental a.s.sociations, among which it is impossible to distinguish the princ.i.p.al object from the accessory." The poem is declared to be full of "flagrant offences against morality and religion" and the poet to have gone out of his way to "revile Christianity and its author." As a final verdict the reviewer says: "Mr.

Sh.e.l.ley's poetry is, in sober sadness, _drivelling prose run mad_.... Be his private qualities what they may, his poems ... are at war with reason, with taste, with virtue, in short, with all that dignifies man, or that man reveres." The _London Literary Gazette_ joined its forces to the _Quarterly_ and scored _Prometheus Unbound_ in 1820, _Queen Mab_ in 1821.

_The Examiner_ of June 16, 23 and July 7, 1822, contained Hunt's answer to the two onslaughts. He accused the writer in the _Quarterly_ of having used six stars to indicate an omission, in order to imply that the name of Christ had been blasphemously used; of having put quotation marks to sentences not in the author criticised and of having intentionally left out so much at times as to make the context seem absurd. At the same time Hunt stated that he agreed that Sh.e.l.ley's poetry was of "too abstract and metaphysical a cast ... too wilful and gratuitous in its metaphors"; and that it would have been better if he had kept metaphysics and polemics out of poetry. But at the same time he a.s.serted that Sh.e.l.ley had written much that was unmetaphysical and poetically beautiful, as _The Cenci_, the _Ode to a Skylark_ and _Adonais_. Of the second he wrote: "I know of nothing more beautiful than this,--more choice of tones, more natural in words, more abundant in exquisite, cordial, and most poetic a.s.sociations." He characterized Southey's reviews as cant, Gifford's as bitter commonplace and Croker's as pettifogging.

_Blackwood's_ reviewed _Adonais_ and _The Cenci_ in December, 1821. The Della Cruscans were reported to have come again from "retreats of c.o.c.kney dalliance in the London suburbs" and "by wainloads from Pisa." The c.o.c.kneys were said to hate everything that was good and true and honorable, all moral ties and Christian principles, and to be steeped in desperate licentiousness. _Adonais_ is fifty-five stanzas of "unintelligible stuff" made up of every possible epithet that the poet has been able to "conglomerate in his piracy through the Lexicon." The sense has been wholly subordinated to the rhymes. The author is a "glutton of names and colours" and has accomplished no more than might be done on such subjects as Mother Goose, Waterloo or Tom Thumb. Two cruel and loathsome parodies follow: _Wouther the city marshal broke his leg_ and an _Elegy on My Tom Cat_, which, it is claimed, are less nonsensical, verbose and inflated than _Adonais_. _The Cenci_ is "a vulgar vocabulary of rottenness and reptilism" in an "odiferous, colorific and daisy-enamoured style." It is regretted by the writer that it is impossible to believe that Sh.e.l.ley's reason is unsettled, for this would be the best apology for the poem.[517]

When _The Liberal_ was organized Sh.e.l.ley was spoken of thus:

"But Percy Bysshe Sh.e.l.ly has now published a long series of poems, the only object of which seems to be the promotion of _atheism_ and _incest_; and we can no longer hesitate to avow our belief, that he is as worthy of co-operating with the King of c.o.c.kaigne, as he is unworthy of co-operating with Lord Byron. Sh.e.l.ley is a man of genius, but he has no sort of sense or judgment. He is merely 'an inspired idiot.' Leigh Hunt is a man of talents, but vanity and vulgarity neutralize all his efforts to pollute the public mind. Lord Byron we regard not only as a man of lofty genius, but of great shrewdness and knowledge of the world. What can HE seriously hope from a.s.sociating his name with such people as these?"[518]

As in the case of Keats, _Blackwood's_ did not have the decency to desist from its indecent articles after Sh.e.l.ley's death. September, 1824, this vulgar ridicule of the two dead poets appeared in answer to Bryan Waller Procter's review of Sh.e.l.ley's poems in the preceding number of the _Edinburgh Review_:

"Mr. Sh.e.l.ley died, it seems, with a volume of Mr. Keats's poetry grasped with the hand in his bosom--rather an awkward posture, as you will be convinced if you try it. But what a rash man Sh.e.l.ley was, to put to sea in a frail boat with Jack's poetry on board. Why, man, it would sink a trireme. In the preface to Mr. Sh.e.l.ley's poems we are told that his 'vessel bore out of sight with a favorable wind;' but what is that to the purpose? It had Endymion on board, and there was an end. Seventeen ton of pig iron would not be more fatal ballast.

Down went the boat with a 'swirl'! I lay a wager that it righted soon after evicting Jack."

In the face of these articles against it as evidence, _Blackwood's_, as early as January, 1828, had the audacity to claim--perhaps with the expectation that its audience was gifted with a sense of subtle humor--that Sh.e.l.ley had been praised in its pages for his fort.i.tude, patience, and many other n.o.ble qualities, and that this praise had irritated the other c.o.c.kneys and made the whole trouble. If Keats suffered at the hands of the Edinburgh dictators for his a.s.sociation with Hunt the balance weighed in the other direction in the case of Sh.e.l.ley. All the crimes and opinions of which he was deemed guilty were pa.s.sed on to Hunt.

But Hunt gladly suffered for Sh.e.l.ley.

Hazlitt, although of Irish descent and a native of Shropshire, and of such independence as to belong to no school whatsoever, came in for a share of abuse second only in virulence to that showered on Hunt.[519] In the _Quarterly_ of April, 1817, in a review of the _Round Table_, probably in retaliation for his abuse of Southey in _The Examiner_, Hazlitt's papers are denominated "vulgar descriptions, silly paradoxes, flat truisms, misty sophistry, broken English, ill-humour and rancorous abuse." His characterizations of Pitt and Burke are "vulgar and foul invective," and "loathsome trash." The author might have described washerwomen forever, the reviewer a.s.serts, "but if the creature, in his endeavours to see the light, must make his way over the tombs of ill.u.s.trious men, disfiguring the records of their greatness with the slime and filth which marks his tracks, it is right to point out that he may be flung back to the situation in which nature designed that he should grovel."

The _Characters of Shakespeare's Plays_ was made an excuse for dissecting the morals and understanding of this "poor cankered creature."[520] The _Lectures on the English Poets_ is characterized as a "third predatory incursion on taste and common sense ... either completely unintelligible, or exhibits only faint and dubious glimpses of meaning ... of that happy texture that leaves not a trace in the mind of either reader or hearer."[521] The _Political Essays_ was said to mark the writer as a death's head hawk-moth, a creature already placed in a state of d.a.m.nation, the drudge of _The Examiner_, the ward of Billingsgate, the slanderer of the human race, one of the plagues of England.[522] Later, in a discussion of _Table Talk_,[523] he becomes a "Slang-Whanger" ("a gabbler who employs slang to amuse the rabble").

Hazlitt's _Letter to Gifford_, 1819, was a reply to all previous attacks of the _Quarterly_. For a pamphlet of eighty-seven pages on such a subject it is "lively reading," for Hazlitt, like Burke, as Mr. Birrell has remarked, excelled in a quarrel.[524] He calls Gifford a cat's paw, the Government critic, the paymaster of the band of Gentleman Pensioners, a nuisance, a

"dull, envious, pragmatical, low-bred man.... Grown old in the service of corruption, he drivels on to the last with prost.i.tuted impotence and shameless effrontery; salves a meagre reputation for wit, by venting the driblets and spleen of his wrath on others; answers their arguments by confuting himself; mistakes habitual obtuseness of intellect for a particular acuteness; not to be imposed upon by shallow appearances; unprincipled rancour for zealous loyalty; and the irritable, discontented, vindictive, peevish effusions of bodily pain and mental imbecility for proofs of refinement of taste and strength of understanding."[525]

_Blackwood's_ had accepted abstracts of Hazlitt's _Lectures on the English Poets_[526] from P. G. Patmore without comment and even managed a lengthy comparison of Jeffrey and Hazlitt with an approach to fair dealing. But by August, 1818, he had been identified with the "c.o.c.kney crew" and he became "that wild, black-bill Hazlitt," a "lounge in third-rate bookshops"; and as a critic of Shakspere, a gander gabbling at that "divine swan." In April of the following year he was christened the "Aristotle" of the c.o.c.kneys. His _Table Talk_ provoked ten pages of vituperation,[527] and _Liber Amoris_, two reviews as coa.r.s.e as the provocation.[528] In the first of these, apropos of his contributions to the _Edinburgh Review_ and in particular of his article on the _Periodical Press of Britain_, the downfall of the magazine and its editor is announced as certain. Hazlitt is called a literary flunky, a sore, an ulcer, a poor devil. In the second he is Hunt's orderly, the "Mars of the Hampstead heavy dragoons."

Hazlitt found relief for his feelings by threatening _Blackwood's_ with a lawsuit. Yet in July, 1824, appeared an elaborate comparison of Hunt and Hazlitt in _Blackwood's_ choicest manner and in March, 1825, a review of the _Spirit of the Age_. After 1828 the defamatory articles ceased entirely. In 1867 appeared what might be construed into an attempt at reparation by Bulwer-Lytton. Hazlitt was still spoken of as the most aggressive of the c.o.c.kneys, discourteous and unscrupulous, a bitter politician who would subst.i.tute universal submission to Napoleon for established monarchial inst.i.tutions; but he is credited with strong powers of reason, of judicial criticism and of metaphysical speculation, and with perception of sentiment, truth and beauty.

CHAPTER VI

CONCLUSION

It is curious that, in the lives of three such geniuses as Sh.e.l.ley, 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 a.s.sociation 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 Sh.e.l.ley 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 pa.s.sing 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 Sh.e.l.ley's politics, greater in this instance than in the case of Byron or Keats.

Hunt's att.i.tude was an important factor in forming Sh.e.l.ley's political creed. With G.o.dwin, he drew Sh.e.l.ley's attention from the creation of imaginary universes to the less speculative issues of earth. Indeed, Sh.e.l.ley'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 att.i.tude. 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 Sh.e.l.ley 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 Sh.e.l.ley show any inclination to emphasize "social enjoyments" or suburban delights. That the literary influence was so slight is not surprising when Sh.e.l.ley'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 Sh.e.l.ley, 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 Sh.e.l.ley called them, thrown together under such trying circ.u.mstances, 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 a.s.sumed 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 a.s.sociation 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 c.o.c.kney 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 a.s.sociated 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 Sh.e.l.ley 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 Sh.e.l.ley, the pa.s.sion 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 ill.u.s.trious contemporaries; he inst.i.tuted the Italian revival in creative literature in the early part of the century; he a.s.sisted in resuscitating the interest in sixteenth and seventeenth century literature.

Hunt's services of friendship to Byron, Sh.e.l.ley and Keats, his able criticism and just defense of them, have found their reward in the inseparable a.s.sociation of his name with their immortal ones. They easily surpa.s.sed 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.