Leigh Hunt's Relations with Byron, Shelley and Keats Part 7

From the beginning of the enterprise Thomas Moore and John Murray scented trouble and made more. They continued their intermeddling after _The Liberal_ was launched, and doubtless ministered to Byron's vacillation.

Hunt and Murray had disagreed over the _Story of Rimini_[364] and an attack on Southey in _The Examiner_ of May 11 and 18, 1817, had included Murray as well. Moreover, Murray saw in John Hunt,[365] the publisher of the new periodical, a dangerous future rival in his business relations with Byron. After matters became unpleasant in Italy, Murray took his revenge by making public Byron's letters containing ill-natured remarks about Hunt.[366] The relations of Moore and Hunt had been very friendly[367] but at this juncture both became too proud of having a "n.o.ble lord" for a friend.[368]

Moore, writing to Byron in the latter part of 1821, said: "I heard some time ago that Leigh Hunt was on his way to Genoa with all of his family; and the idea seems to be, that you and Sh.e.l.ley and he are to _conspire_ together in _The Examiner_. I cannot believe this--and deprecate such a plan with all my might. _Alone_ you may do anything, but partnerships in fame, like those in trade, make the strongest party answerable for the deficiencies or delinquencies of the rest, and I tremble even for you with such a bankrupt company.... They are both clever fellows, and Sh.e.l.ley I look upon as a man of real genius; but, I must say again, you could not give your enemies (the ... s 'et hoc genus omne') a greater triumph than by joining such an unequal and unholy alliance,"[369] an astounding statement from a man of p.r.o.nounced liberal views. Byron's answer of January 24 was indefinite and perhaps intentionally misleading: "Be a.s.sured that there is no such coalition as you apprehend."[370] February 19, Moore advised Byron not to discuss religious matters in the new work, but to confine himself to political theories; "if you have any political catamarans to explode this (London) is your place."[371] After _The Liberal_ was begun, Moore wrote: "It grieves me to urge anything so much against Hunt's interest, but I should not hesitate to use the same language to himself were I near him. I would, if I were you, serve him in every possible way but this--I would give him (if he would accept of it) the profits of the same works, published separately--but I would not mix myself up in this way with others. I would not become a partner in this sort of miscellaneous '_pot au feu_' where the bad flavour of one ingredient is sure to taint all the rest. I would be, if I were _you_, alone, single-handed and as such, invincible."[372]

The Hunts started for Italy November 15, 1821, but on account of various setbacks and delays did not really leave the coast of England until May 13, 1822. In the ten months which elapsed between the invitation to Hunt and his arrival, it is not surprising that Byron's enthusiasm had cooled.

He would have withdrawn if he could have done so, although Byron, Trelawny says, was at first more eager than Sh.e.l.ley for Hunt's arrival.[373] As has already been stated above, affairs between Byron and Sh.e.l.ley had been very strained in January. In the letter of March 2, already referred to, Sh.e.l.ley informed Hunt that matters had improved between Byron and himself and that Byron expressed the "greatest eagerness to proceed with the journal, he dilates with impatience on the delay, and he disregards the opinion of those who have advised him against it."

Sh.e.l.ley thought that their strained relations would in no way interfere with Hunt's prospects, and, with what looks a little like double-dealing, that it would be possible for him to preserve what influence he had over the "Proteus" until Hunt arrived: "It will be no very difficult task to execute that you have a.s.signed me--to keep him in heart with the project until your arrival."[374] April 10, Sh.e.l.ley wrote again to Hunt of Byron's eagerness for his arrival: "he urges me to press you to depart." But a reference to the state of affairs in the two households in Italy carries a foreboding note: "Lord Byron has made me bitterly feel the inferiority which the world has presumed to place between us, and which subsists nowhere in reality but in our own talents, which are not our own but Nature's--or in our rank, which is not our own but Fortune's." With his usual humility, Sh.e.l.ley closes the letter with an apology for carrying his jealousy of Byron into Hunt's relations with him, and says: "You in the superiority of a wise and tranquil nature have well corrected and justly reproved me ... you will find much in me to correct and reprove."[375]

During the summer Sh.e.l.ley continued to shrink more than ever from Byron; June 18 he declared to Hunt that he would not be the link between them for Byron is the "nucleus of all that is hateful." His one dread was that he might injure Hunt's prospects.[376] Between April and July Byron's enthusiasm had again cooled. Trelawny relates that Sh.e.l.ley when he went to Leghorn to meet Hunt, was greatly depressed by Lord Byron's "shuffling and equivocating," and, "but for imperilling Hunt's prospects," that Sh.e.l.ley would have abruptly terminated their intercourse.[377] On July 4 Sh.e.l.ley wrote to Mary from Pisa that "things are in the worst possible situation with respect to poor Hunt.... Lord Byron must of course furnish the requisite funds at present, as I cannot, but he seems inclined to depart without the necessary explanations and arrangements due to such a situation as Hunt's. These, in spite of delicacy, I must procure."[378]

This dual att.i.tude of Sh.e.l.ley has been variously viewed. Professor Dowden thinks it a "triumph of diplomacy,"[379] while Jeaffreson deems it a conspiracy of Hunt and Sh.e.l.ley against the innocent and unsuspecting Byron.

Hunt gave the following ominous description of his first call upon Lord Byron: "The day was very hot; the road to Mount Nero was very hot, through dusty suburbs; and when I got there I found the hottest looking house I ever saw. It was salmon colour. Think of this, flaring over the country in a hot Italian sun! But the greatest of all the heats was within. Upon seeing Lord Byron, I hardly knew him, he was grown so fat; and he was longer in recognizing me, I had grown so thin."[380] Hunt wrote to England that Byron received him with marked cordiality[381] but Sh.e.l.ley's friend Williams, in his last letter to his wife, stated that Byron treated Hunt vilely and "actually said as much that he did not wish his name to be attached to the work, and of course to theirs"; that his treatment of Mrs.

Hunt was "most shameful"; and that his "conduct cut H. to the soul."[382]

The Hunt family was quickly quartered on the ground floor of Byron's palace, which Byron had furnished at a cost of 60.[383] Sh.e.l.ley's sensible suggestions to Hunt about his furniture,[384] about the income from _The Examiner_, and worse still, his delicately given advice that it was not possible for him to bring _all_ of his family, had been ignored.[385]

With Sh.e.l.ley's tragic death a few days after their arrival, the only "link of the two thunderbolts,"[386] as he had called himself, was broken. Hunt was left in an awkward position which no one could have foreseen. A few days later he wrote to friends at home of Byron's kindness.[387] In 1828 he gave a different version:

"Lord Byron requested me to look upon him as standing in Mr. S.'s place. My heart died within me to hear him; I made the proper acknowledgment, but I knew what he meant, and I more than doubted whether even in that, the most trivial part of the friendship, he could resemble Mr. Sh.e.l.ley, if he would. Circ.u.mstances unfortunately rendered the matter of too much importance to me at the moment. I had reason to fear:--I was compelled to try:--and things turned out as I had dreaded. The public have been given to understand that Lord Byron's purse was at my command, and that I used it according to the spirit with which it was offered. _I did so._ Stern necessity and a family compelled me."[388]

With the magazine scarcely likely to yield an income for some time, it was absolutely necessary for Hunt to get money from somewhere for living expenses and, Sh.e.l.ley gone, there was no one left to tide over the interval but Byron. The latter did not relish the position of sole banker to a family of nine and doled out 70 in small doses through his steward, Hunt says, just as if his "disgraces were being counted."[389] He was embittered by his position as suppliant and dependent, though there is nothing to show that he was ever refused what he asked for or requested to pay back what he owed.[390]

Hunt's entire money obligation to Byron has been comprehensively calculated by Galt at 500: 200 for the journey from England, 70 at Pisa for living expenses, the cost of the journey from Pisa to Genoa, and 30 from Genoa to Florence. Galt thought the use of the ground floor a small favor since Byron could use only one floor for himself. Such practices were very common, Italian palaces often being built for that purpose.[391]

It is likely that until the step was irrevocable Byron did not correctly gauge Hunt's resources and the responsibility which he was a.s.suming in transporting a large family to a foreign country. If he did, he expected to share the burden with Sh.e.l.ley. Had Hunt been financially independent, it is probable that he and Byron would have remained on amicable enough terms, for the former a.s.serts that the first time he was treated with disrespect was when Byron knew he was in want.[392] Yet that neither Sh.e.l.ley nor Byron were wholly ignorant of what to expect before Hunt's arrival in Italy is apparent from Sh.e.l.ley's letter to Byron, February 15, 1822:

"Hunt had urged me more than once to ask you to lend him this money.

My answer consisted in sending him all I could spare, which I have now literally done. Your kindness in fitting up a part of your own home for his accommodation I sensibly felt, and willingly accept from you on his part, but, believe me, without the slightest intention of imposing, or, if I could help it, of allowing to be imposed, any heavier task on your purse. As it has come to this in spite of my exertions, I will not conceal from you the low ebb of my own money affairs in the present moment,--that is, my absolute incapacity of a.s.sisting Hunt further. I do not think poor Hunt's promise to pay in a given time is worth very much, but mine is less subject to uncertainty, and I should be happy to be responsible for any engagement he may have proposed to you."[393]

Mrs. Hunt seems to have widened further the breach between the two men.[394] She did not speak Italian and the Countess Guiccioli, the head of Byron's establishment, did not speak English. Neither made any linguistic efforts and consequently there was no intercourse between the families of the two households. This, Hunt later says, was the first cause of diminished cordiality between Byron and himself. The Hunt children were a further cause of trouble. Byron wrote of them to Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley: "They were dirtier and more mischievous than Yahoos. What they can't destroy with their feet they will with their fingers."[395] Again he described them as "six little blackguards ... kraal out of the Hottentot country."[396]

The question of rank was a thorn in the flesh, particularly to Hunt. While in open theory he had no respect for t.i.tles, in actual practice he groveled before them. Pride, as he thought, had made him decline all advances from men of rank, but it was more with the air of being afraid to trust himself than with real indifference. His exception, made in the case of Lord Byron, is thus explained: "But talents, poetry, similarity of political opinion, flattery of early sympathy with my boyish writings, more flattering offers of friendship and the last climax of flattery, an earnest waiving of his rank, were too much for me in the person of Lord Byron."[397] On the renewal of the acquaintance in Italy, the very familiar att.i.tude seen in the dedication of the _Story of Rimini_, which Hunt himself had decided was "foolish," was changed at the advice of Sh.e.l.ley to an extremely formal manner of address. Hunt says that Byron did not like the change.[398] As a matter of fact, six years of separation had brought about other more important changes: Byron had grown more selfish and avaricious, Hunt more helpless and vain.

Three months were spent in Pisa after Sh.e.l.ley's death. In September the two families left for Genoa, travelling in separate parties and, on their arrival, settling in separate homes, the Hunts with Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley. From this time on there was little intercourse between Byron and Hunt. October 9, 1822, Byron wrote to England and denied that all three families were living under one roof. He said that he rarely saw Hunt, not more than once a month.[399] Hunt to the contrary said that they saw less of each other than in Genoa yet "considerable."[400] Although at no time was there an open breach, yet cordiality and sympathy were wholly lost on both sides in the strain of the financial situation. They failed of agreement even on impersonal matters. Byron had looked forward with great pleasure to Hunt's companionship. Before they met he had written: "When Leigh Hunt comes we shall have banter enough about those old _ruffiani_, the old dramatists, with their tiresome conceits, their jingling rhymes, and endless play upon words."[401] This pleasant antic.i.p.ation was not realized, for Hunt's sensitiveness in petty matters and Byron's scorn of Hunt's affectation and of his ill-bred personal applications,[402] or so the hearer interpreted them, reduced safe topics to Boswell's _Life of Johnson_. Even a mutual admiration of Pope and Dryden was forgotten. Literary jealousy and vanity fed the flames. Hunt was unable to appreciate manhood of Byron's virile type, and he did not try to conceal the fact from one who was hungry for praise. On the other hand, Byron did not render to Hunt the homage he was accustomed to receive from the c.o.c.kney circle and had nothing but contempt for all his works except the _Story of Rimini_. A statement in the anonymous _Life of Lord Byron_, published by Iley, that the misunderstanding was the result of a criticism by Hunt of _Parisina_ in the Leghorn and Lucca newspapers and that Byron never spoke to him after the discovery[403] is a fabrication as unsubstantial as the greater part of the other statements in the same book. Hunt denied the charge. His sole connection with _Parisina_ was that he supplied the incident of the heroine talking in her sleep,[404] a device that he had already made use of in _Rimini_.

On his arrival in Italy Hunt wrote back to England that Byron entered into _The Liberal_ with great ardor, and that he had presented the _Vision of Judgment_ to his brother and himself for their mutual benefit.[405] Yet four days later in a letter to Moore Byron wrote: "Hunt seems sanguine about the matter but (entre nous) I am not. I do not, however, like to put him out of spirits by saying so, for he is bilious and unwell. Do, pray, answer _this_ letter immediately. Do send Hunt anything in prose or verse of yours, to start him handsomely--and lyrical, _iri_cal, or what you please."[406] At the time of Trelawny's first visit after the work had begun, Byron said impatiently: "It will be an abortion," and again in Trelawny's presence he called to his bull-dog on the stairway, "Don't let any c.o.c.kneys pa.s.s this way."[407] Sometime previous to October his endurance must have given way completely, for in that month Hunt wrote that Byron was _again_ for the plan.[408] In January Byron urged John Hunt to employ good writers for _The Liberal_ that it might succeed.[409] March 17, 1823, Byron, in a letter to John Hunt, said that he attributed the failure of _The Liberal_ to his own contributions and that the magazine would stand a better chance without him. He desired to sever the partnership if the magazine was to be continued.[410] His constant vacillation in part supports the charge made by Hunt that Byron under protest contributed his worse productions in order to make a show of cooperation.[411] Insinuations from Moore and Murray had fallen on fertile ground and had persuaded Byron that the a.s.sociation jeopardized his reputation. Hobhouse, Byron's friend, joined his dissenting voice to theirs, and "rushed over the Alps" to add to his disapproval.[412]

Hazlitt's account of the conspiracy of Byron's friends against _The Liberal_ is very fiery.[413]

The first number of _The Liberal_ appeared October 15, 1822. There were three subsequent numbers. Byron's contributions were his brilliant and masterly satire, the _Vision of Judgment_, _Heaven and Earth_, _A Letter to the Editor of my Grandmother's Review_, _The Blues_, and his translation of the first canto of Pulci's _Morgante Maggiore_. Murray had withheld the preface to the _Vision of Judgment_ and this omission, combined with an unwise announcement in _The Examiner_ of September 29, 1822, by John Hunt, made the reception even worse than it might otherwise have been. Hunt said the _Vision of Judgment_ "played the devil with all of us."[414] Sh.e.l.ley had made ready for the forthcoming magazine his exquisite translation of Goethe's _May Day Night_ and a prose narrative, _A German Apologue_. These appeared in the first number. Hunt's best contributions were two poems, _Lines to a Spider_ and _Mahmoud_. _Letters from Abroad_ are good in spots only. His two satires, _The Dogs_ and _The Book of Beginners_, are pale reflections in meter and tone of _Don Juan_ and _Beppo_ combined. The _Florentine Lovers_ is a good story spoiled.

_Rhyme and Reason_, _The Guili Tre_, and the rest are purely hack work, with the possible exceptions of the translation from Ariosto and the modernization of the _Squire's Tale_. Hazlitt contributed _Pulpit Oratory_, _On the Spirit of Monarchy_, a pithy dissertation _On the Scotch Character_, and a delightful reminiscence of Coleridge in _My First Acquaintance with Poets_. Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley wrote _A Tale of the Pa.s.sions_, _Mme. D'Houdetot_, and _Giovanni Villani_, all rather stilted and heavy.

Charles Browne contributed _Shakespear's Fools_. A number of unidentified prose articles and poems, many of the latter translations from Alfieri, completed the list.

The causes of the failure of _The Liberal_ were very complex, but quite obvious. There was no definite political campaign mapped out, no proportion outlined for the various departments, no a.s.signments of individual responsibility, no attempt to cater to the public appet.i.te or to mollify the public prejudices for expediency's sake, and an utter want of harmony among its supporters. Each contributor rode his own hobby.

Each vented his private spleen without regard to the common good. It was a vague, up-in-the-air scheme, wholly lacking in coordination and common sense. Byron's fickleness and want of genuine interest in a small affair among many other greater ones; the disappointment of both Byron[415] and Hunt in not realizing the enormous profits that they had looked forward to--although Hunt wrote later that the "moderate profits" were quite enough to have encouraged perseverance on the part of Byron; Hunt's ill-health and unhappy situation which rendered it difficult for him to write; John Hunt's inexperience as a bookseller; the general unpopularity of the editor, the publisher, and the contributors; and last, the pent-up storm of rage from the press which greeted the first number of _The Liberal_,[416] were other reasons that contributed to its ultimate downfall. In seeking Hunt for the editor of such a venture, as Gait had pointed out,[417] Byron had mistaken his political notoriety for solid literary reputation.

Hunt, notwithstanding his confession[418] of an inability to write at his best and of his brother's inexperience, throws the burden of failure solely on Byron. He a.s.serts that _The Liberal_ had no enemies and, worst of all, that Byron when he foresaw hostility and failure, gave him and his brother the profits that they might carry the responsibility of an "ominous partnership"[419]--a statement ungenerously distorted by bitter memories, for when John Hunt was prosecuted for the publication of the _Vision of Judgment_, Byron offered to stand trial in his stead. Neither does Hunt state that Byron's contributions were _gratis_ and that the "moderate profits" enabled him and his brother to pay off some of their old debts.[420] Byron, strong with the prescience of failure, likewise shifted the blame to other shoulders and with the aid of a strong imagination tried to persuade himself and his friends that the Hunts had projected the affair and that he had consented in an evil hour to engage in it;[421] that they were the cause of the failure; that his motives throughout had been philanthropic only in nature;[422] and that he was sacrificing himself for others. Such statements are inventions born of self-accusation and of self-defense. The worst that can be said of Byron from beginning to end of the affair is that he was not conscientious in his endeavors to make the journal a success; that, after it failed, he evaded financial responsibility by placing barriers of coldness and ungraciousness between Hunt and himself.

On October 9, 1822, he wrote to Moore that he had done all he could for Hunt "but in the affairs of this world he himself is a child";[423] "As it is, I will not quit them (the Hunts) in their adversity, though it should cost me my character, fame, money, and the usual et cetera.... Had their journal gone on well, and I could have aided to make it better for them, I should then have left them; after my safe pilotage off a lee sh.o.r.e, to make a prosperous voyage by themselves. As it is, I can't, or would not, if I could, leave them amidst the breakers. As to any community of feeling, thought, or opinions between L. H. and me, there is little or none; we meet rarely, hardly ever; but I think him a good-principled and able man.[424]... You would not have had me leave him in the street with his family, would you? And as to the other plan you mention, you forget how it would humiliate him--that his writings should be supposed to be dead weight! Think a moment--he is perhaps the vainest man on earth, at least his own friends say so pretty loudly; and if he were in other circ.u.mstances I might be tempted to take him down a peg; but not now--it would be cruel.[425]... A more amiable man in society I know not, nor (when he will allow his sense to prevail over his sectarian principles) a better writer. When he was writing his _Rimini_ I was not the last to discover its beauties, long before it was published. Even then I remonstrated against its vulgarisms; which are the more extraordinary, because the author is anything but a vulgar man."[426] During April, 1823, the Countess of Blessington had a conversation with Byron in which he said that while he regretted having embarked in _The Liberal_, yet he had a good opinion of the talents and principles of Hunt, despite their diametrically opposed tastes.[427] On April 2, 1823, he wrote that Hunt was incapable or unwilling to help himself; that he could not keep up this "genuine philanthropy" permanently; and that he would furnish Hunt with the means to return to England in comfort.[428] There is no proof that Byron ever made such an offer to Hunt. The purchase money of Hunt's journey home was _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_. On July 23, 1823, Byron went to Greece. The Hunts, provided by him with 30 for the trip, left Genoa about the same time for Florence, where they were literally stranded, in ill-health and without sufficient means for support,[429] until their departure for England in September, 1825. The suffering there and the foul calumny at home magnified in Hunt's mind[430]

the indignity and injustice that had been put upon him and warped his sense of grat.i.tude and honor in the whole affair. He wrote from Florence: "The stiffness of age has come into my joints; my legs are sore and fevered; and I sometimes feel as if I were a ship rotting in a stagnant harbour."[431] Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley protested to Byron concerning his treatment of Hunt[432] but she received no further satisfaction than the statement that he had engaged in the journal for good-will and respect for Hunt solely.[433]

The publisher Colburn in 1825 made Hunt an advance of money for the return journey, to be repaid by a volume of selections from _his own writings preceded by a biographical sketch_.[434] An irresistible longing for England and a crisis in the disagreement with John Hunt regarding the proprietary rights of _The Examiner_ and the publication of the _Wishing Cap Papers_ in that paper, made Hunt seize at the first opportunity by which he might return home. From Paris, on his way to England, he wrote: "If I delayed I might be pinned forever to a distance, like a fluttering bird to a wall, and so die in helpless yearning. I have been mistaken.

During my strength my weakness perhaps, was only apparent; now that I am weaker, indignation has given a fillip to my strength."[435] From his severance with _The Examiner_ and the publication of _Bacchus in Tuscany_ in 1825, Hunt was idle until 1828. Then, pressed by his obligation to Colburn and stung by the misrepresentations of the press regarding his relations with Byron in Italy, he scored even, as he thought, by producing _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_, the blunder of his life and the one blot upon his honor. In addition to the part dealing with Byron, it contained autobiographical reminiscences and memoirs of Sh.e.l.ley, Keats, Moore, Lamb and others. It went rapidly through three editions. The body of the work is a discussion of the defects of Byron's character and a detailed a.n.a.lysis of his actions. In brief, he is charged with insincerity in the cause of liberty; an impatience of any despotism save his own; a vain pride of rank, although his friends were of humble origin; a "libelling all around" of friends; an ignorance of real love, consanguineous or s.e.xual; coa.r.s.eness in speaking of women or to them;[436]

a voluptuous indolence; weak impulses; a habit of miscellaneous confidences and exaggeration; untruthfulness; susceptibility to influence; avarice even in his patriotism and debauchery; a willingness to receive petty obligations; jealousy of the great and small; no powers of conversation and a want of self-possession; bad temper and self-will; an inordinate desire for flattery; egotism and love of notoriety. More petty accusations are excess in his eating and drinking, though Hunt complains that Byron would not "drink like a lord"; his fondness for communicating unpleasant tidings; his inclination to the mock heroic; his effeminacy and old-womanish superst.i.tion; his easily-aroused suspicions; his imitativeness in writing poetry; his slight knowledge of languages; his physical cowardice. The virtues of this monster, small in number and grudgingly allowed, were admitted to be good horsemanship, good looks, a delicate hand, amusing powers of mimicry, pleasantry in his cups, masterly swimming. Unfortunately these statements were usually d.a.m.ned with a "but"

or "yet."

While it is now generally believed that many of the accusations made by Hunt were true,[437] inasmuch as they are confirmed in large part by contemporary evidence, and as truthfulness was one of Hunt's dominant traits, yet, on the other hand, it is quite necessary to make large allowance for the point of view and the color given by prejudice and bitterness of spirit. That Hunt told only the truth does not justify the injury in the slightest, for he had slept under Byron's roof and eaten of his bread. The obligations conferred were not exactly those of benefactor to suppliant; they were perhaps no more than Hunt's due in the light of the responsibility voluntarily a.s.sumed by Byron; yet they could not be destroyed or forgotten because of a refusal to acknowledge them. Worse still, Hunt's motives proceeded from impecuniosity and revenge. Such petty gossip of private affairs was worthy of a smaller and meaner soul. That Hunt did not have the sanction of his own judgment and conscience is clearly seen in the preface to the first edition where he confesses an unwilling hand and gives as a reason for the change of scheme a too long holiday taken after the advance of money from Colburn. He says that the book would never have been written at all, or consigned to the flames when finished, if he could have repaid the money.[438] His one poor defense is that "Byron talked freely of me and mine," that the public had talked, and that Byron knew how he felt.[439]

The book had a very large circulation. But Hunt, who had hoped to defend himself in this manner from the calumnies afloat since the failure of _The Liberal_, brought down a storm of abuse from the press that resulted in his degradation and Byron's canonization. Moore's welcome was a poem, _The Living Dog and the Dead Lion_.[440] Hunt's friends replied with _The Giant and the Dwarf_.[441] In his life of Byron published some years later, Moore speaks reservedly of the book, merely saying it had sunk into deserved oblivion.[442]

Hunt's public apology and reparation, in so far as such lay in his power, were first made in 1847 in _A Saunter Through the West End_: "No. 140 (formerly No. 13 of what was Piccadilly Terrace) was the last house which Byron inhabited in England. n.o.body needs to be told what a great wit and fine poet he was: but everybody does not know that he was by nature a genial and generous man spoiled by the most untoward circ.u.mstances in early life. He vexed his enemies, and sometimes his friends; but his very advantages have been hard upon him, and subjected him to all sorts of temptations. May peace rest upon his infirmities, and his fame brighten as it advances."[443] In 1848, he wrote in praise of the Ave Maria stanza in _Don Juan_.[444] And finally and completely in his _Autobiography_ he apologized for the heat and venom of _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_:

"I wrote nothing which I did not feel to be true, or think so. But I can say with Alamanni, that I was then a young man, and that I am now advanced in years. I can say, that I was agitated by grief and anger, and that I am now free from anger. I can say, that I was far more alive to other people's defects than to my own, and that I am now sufficiently sensible of my own to show to others the charity which I need myself. I can say, moreover, that apart from a little allowance for provocation, I do not think it right to exhibit what is amiss, or may be thought amiss, in the character of a fellow-creature, out of any feeling but unmistakable sorrow, or the wish to lessen evils which society itself may have caused.

"Lord Byron, with respect to the points on which he erred and suffered (for on all others, a man like himself, poet and wit, could not but give and receive pleasure), was the victim of a bad bringing up, of a series of false positions in society, of evils arising from the mistakes of society itself, of a personal disadvantage (which his feelings exaggerated), nay, of his very advantages of person, and of a face so handsome as to render with strong tendencies of natural affection," and declared that his fickleness had been "nurtured by an excessively bad training." In exoneration of Hunt he said that if "disappointment and the fervour of a new literary work--which often draws the pen beyond its original intention--led Leigh Hunt into a book that was too severe, perhaps too one-sided in its views, he himself afterwards corrected the one-sidedness, and recalled to mind the earlier and undoubtedly the more correct impression he had had of Lord Byron." I, 202-203.

him an object of admiration. Even the lameness, of which he had such a resentment, only softened the admiration with tenderness.

"But he did not begin life under good influences. He had a mother, herself, in all probability, the victim of bad training, who would fling the dishes from table at his head, and tell him he would be a scoundrel like his father. His father, who was cousin to the previous lord, had been what is called a man upon town, and was neither rich nor very respectable. The young lord, whose means had not yet recovered themselves, went to school, n.o.ble but poor, expecting to be in the ascendant with his t.i.tle, yet kept down by the inconsistency of his condition. He left school to put on the cap with the gold tuft, which is worshipped at college:--he left college to fall into some of the worst hands on the town:--his first productions were contemptuously criticised, and his genius was thus provoked into satire:--his next were overpraised, which increased his self-love:--he married when his temper had been soured by difficulties, and his will and pleasure pampered by the s.e.x:--and he went companionless into a foreign country, where all this perplexity could repose without being taught better, and where the sense of a lost popularity could be drowned in license.

"I am sorry I ever wrote a syllable respecting Lord Byron which might have been spared. I have still to relate my connection with him, but it will be related in a different manner. Pride, it is said, will have a fall; and I must own, that on this subject I have experienced the truth of the saying. I had prided myself--I should pride myself now if I had not been thus rebuked--on not being one of those who talk against others. I went counter to this feeling in a book; and to crown the absurdity of the contradiction, I am foolish enough to suppose that the very fact of my so doing would show that I had done it in no other instance! that having been thus public in the error, credit would be given me for never having been privately so! Such are the delusions inflicted on us by self-love. When the consequence was represented to me as characterized by my enemies, I felt, enemies though they were, as if I blushed from head to foot. It is true I had been goaded to the task by misrepresentation:--I had resisted every other species of temptation to do it:--and, after all, I said more in his excuse, and less to his disadvantage, than many of those who reproved me. But enough. I owed the acknowledgment to him and to myself; and I shall proceed on my course with a sigh for both, and I trust in the good will of the sincere."[445]

CHAPTER V

Characteristics of the "c.o.c.kney School"--Reasons for Tory enmity--Establishment of _Blackwood's Magazine_ and the _Quarterly Review_--Their methods of attack--Other targets--Authorship of anonymous articles--Members of the c.o.c.kney group--Byron--Hunt--Keats--Sh.e.l.ley-- Hazlitt.

The word "c.o.c.kney" says Bulwer-Lytton, signifies the "archetype of the Londoner east of Temple Bar, and is as grotesquely identified with the Bells of Bow as Quasimodo with those of Notre Dame."[446] The epithet remains doubtful in origin but is proverbially significant of odium and of ridicule. R. H. Horne a.s.serts that, in its first application, it meant merely "pastoral, minus nature."[447] The word did not long carry so harmless a connotation. It was first applied to Hunt by the Tory journals in 1817 and, in the phrase "c.o.c.kney School," was gradually extended until it included most of his a.s.sociates. The group of men thus arbitrarily banded together did not form a _school_ or cult, and themselves resented such a cla.s.sification. They differed widely in their fundamental principles of life and art. They were not all of one vocation. On the other hand they had certain superficial points in common which made them collectively vulnerable to the dart of the enemy. They were Londoners[448]

by birth or by adoption; with the exception of Sh.e.l.ley they may all be said to have belonged to the middle cla.s.s; the most c.o.c.kneyfied of them had certain vulgar mannerisms; they egotistically paraded their personal affairs in public; they praised each other somewhat fulsomely in dedications and elsewhere, though not always to the full satisfaction of everybody concerned; they presented each other with wreaths of bay, laurel, and roses, and with locks of hair; they agreed in liking Thomas Moore and in disliking Southey; they moved with complacency within a limited circle to the exclusion of a large city; in general they were liberal in politics and in religion; they were in revolt against French criticism; they chose Elizabethan or Italian models, and, as a rule, they conceitedly ignored or contemned contemporary writers.

The gatherings of the coterie have been nowhere better described than by Cowden Clarke:

"Evenings of Mozartian operatic and chamber music at Vincent Novello's own house, where Leigh Hunt, Sh.e.l.ley, Keats and the Lambs were invited guests; the brilliant supper parties at the alternate dwellings of the Novellos, the Hunts and the Lambs, who had mutually agreed that bread and cheese, with celery, and Elia's immortalized 'Lutheran beer' were to be the sole cates provided; the meetings at the theatres, when Munden, Dowton, Liston, Bannister, Elliston and f.a.n.n.y Kelly were on the stage; the picnic repasts enjoyed together by appointment in the fields that lay spread in green breadth and luxuriance between the west end of Oxford Street and the western slope of Hampstead Hill--are things never to be forgotten."[449]

Miss Mitford relates a ludicrous incident of one of these meetings:

"Leigh Hunt (not the notorious Mr. Henry Hunt, but the fop, poet and politician of the 'Examiner') is a great keeper of birthdays. He was celebrating that of Haydn, the great composer--giving a dinner, crowning his bust with laurels, berhyming the poor dear German, and conducting an apotheosis in full form. Somebody told Mr. Haydon they were celebrating _his_ birthday. So off he trotted to Hampstead, and bolted into the company--made a very fine animated speech--thanked him most sincerely for what they had done him and the arts in his person."[450]

At one time the set became violently vegetarian. The enthusiasm came to a sudden end, as narrated by Joseph Severn:

"Leigh Hunt most eloquently discussed the charms and advantages of these vegetable banquets, depicting in glowing words the cauliflowers swimming in melted b.u.t.ter, and the peas and beans never profaned with animal gravy. In the midst of his rhapsody he was interrupted by the venerable Wordsworth, who begged permission to ask a question. 'If,'

he said, 'by chance of good luck they ever met with a caterpillar, they thanked their stars for the delicious morsel of animal food.'

This absurdity all came to an end by an ugly discovery. Haydon, whose ruddy face had kept the other enthusiasts from sinking under their scanty diet--for they clung fondly to the hope that they would become like him, although they increased daily in pallor and leanness--this Haydon was discovered one day coming out of a chop-house. He was promptly taxed with treachery, when he honestly confessed that every day after the vegetable repast he ate a good beef-steak. This fact plunged the others in despair, and Leigh Hunt a.s.sured me that on vegetable diet his const.i.tution had received a blow from which he had never recovered. With Sh.e.l.ley it was different, for he was by nature formed to regard animal food repulsively."[451]

The causes of the enmity of the press were political rather than literary or personal and have already been sufficiently dwelt upon in the preceding chapters. The strong rivalry between Edinburgh and London as publishing strongholds intensified the strife. Hunt in particular had centered attention upon himself by his persistent and violent attacks on Gifford and Southey for several years previous to 1817. Besides _The Examiner's_ persistent allusions to these two unregenerates, a savage diatribe had appeared in the _Feast of the Poets_, which alluded to Gifford's humble origin and mediocre ability, charged him with being a government tool, and continued: "But a vile, peevish temper, the more inexcusable in its indulgence, because he appears to have had early warning of its effects, breaks out in every page of his criticism, and only renders his affected grinning the more obnoxious ... I pa.s.s over the nauseous epistle to Peter Pindar, and even notes to his Baviad and Moeviad, where though less vulgar in his language, he has a great deal of the pert cant and snip-snap which he deprecates."[452] During 1817, _The Examiner_ had concerned itself particularly with Southey. He had been called an apostate, a hypocrite, and almost every other name in Hunt's abusive vocabulary. Sir Walter Scott had not been spared. His politics were said to be easily estimated by the "simple fact, that of all the advocates of Charles the Second, he is the least scrupulous in mentioning his crimes, because he is the least abashed;" his command of prose was declared equal to nothing beyond "a plain statement or a brief piece of criticism;" his poetry "a little thinking conveyed in a great many words."[453] Hunt thus secured to himself, through offensive and aggressive abuse, the hostility of the Tories both in England and in Scotland. His weaknesses and affectations made him a conspicuous and a.s.sailable target for the inevitable return fire.[454]

The establishment by the Tories of the _Quarterly Review_ in 1809 and of _Blackwood's Magazine_ in 1817 was with the view of opposing and, if possible, of suppressing the _Edinburgh Review_ and _The Examiner_. The brunt of the hostility fell upon the latter, for Hunt, by reason of his extreme social and religious policy, could not always rally the _Edinburgh Review_ to his support. With the founding of the _London Magazine_ in 1820 he had a new ally in its editor, John Scott, but the war had then already raged for three years, and Scott fell a victim to it in two years'

time.[455] By a process of elimination Scott fixed the ident.i.ty of "Z"--such was the only signature of the articles on the c.o.c.kney School in _Blackwood's_--upon Lockhart. He also a.s.serted that Lockhart was the editor of the magazine. Lockhart demanded an apology. His friend Christie took up the quarrel. In the duel which followed Scott was fatally wounded.

His death followed Keats's within four days.