Leigh Hunt's Relations with Byron, Shelley and Keats Part 13

Symonds, John Addington. Sh.e.l.ley. (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 Sh.e.l.ley's description of his first friendship. (Hogg, _Life of Percy Bysshe Sh.e.l.ley_, pp. 23-24.)

[4] This early pa.s.sion for friendship, which developed into a power of attracting men vastly more gifted than himself, brought about him besides Byron, Sh.e.l.ley and Keats, such men as Charles Lamb, Robert Browning, Carlyle, d.i.c.kens, Horace and James Smith, Charles Cowden Clarke, Vincent Novello, William G.o.dwin, 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 c.h.i.n.k of a purse." (_The Examiner_, 1808, p. 721.)

[11] d.i.c.kens 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_, d.i.c.kens 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 d.i.c.kens."

(_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] G.o.dwin, _Enquiry Concerning Political Justice_, Book VIII, Chap. I.

[13] Prof. Saintsbury has very plausibly suggested that a similar att.i.tude in G.o.dwin, Coleridge and Southey in respect to financial a.s.sistance 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 n.o.ble 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 circ.u.mstances 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 carca.s.s of corruption, full of sottishness and selfishness, preying upon the hard labour of honest men, and never to be moved but by its l.u.s.t 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 ent.i.tled, _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 500 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_ st.u.r.dily 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 n.o.body 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 ent.i.tled _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 G.o.dlike 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 a.s.sent." (_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 s.p.a.ce--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.)