Leigh Hunt

“ Not only was Leigh Hunt far from strong enough for a serious argument, but the cheery, sentimental optimism of which he was one of the most persevering exponents—the kind of thing which vehemently protests that in the good time coming nobody shall be damned, or starved, or put in prison, or subjected to the perils of villainous saltpetre, or prevented from doing just what he likes, and that all existence ought to be and shortly will be a vaguely refined beer and skittles—did not lend itself very well to verse. ”

“ HUNT, THORNTON LEIGH (1810–1873) , journalist, eldest son of James Henry Leigh Hunt [q. v.] and his wife, Marianne Kent, was born in London on 10 Sept. 1810. When Leigh Hunt was in gaol in 1813, his son was constantly with him, and his presence there occasioned Lamb's verses addressed 'To T.L.H., a child.' In 1822 Hunt went with his parents to Italy. His father intended to make him an artist, and with this view Hunt passed some time in a studio. He soon, however wearied of the scheme, but he obtained work as an art critic. ”

“ Being of a cheerful temperament, happiness had probably the upper hand. His was a light, mildly joyous nature, gentle, grace-fill, yet seldom attaining to that deepest grace which results from power; for beauty, like woman, its human representative, dallies with the gentle, but yields its consummate favor only to the strong. I imagine that Leigh Hunt may have been more beautiful when I met him, both in person and character, than in his earlier days. As a young man, I could conceive of his being finical in certain moods, but not now, when the gravity of age shed a venerable grace about him. ”

“ The philosophy of Leigh Hunt is loving, cheerful, and confiding in the goodness that governs us all. And when we look back to what was the state of things when he began to write, and then look round and see what it is now, we must admit that he has a good foundation for so genial a faith. ”

“ His person, at all events, was thoroughly American, and of the best type, as were likewise his manners; for we are the best as well as the worst mannered people in the world.
Leigh Hunt loved dearly to be praised. That is to say, he desired sympathy as a flower seeks sunshine, and perhaps profited by it as much in the richer depth of coloring that it imparted to his ideas. ”

“ John Keats had no more right to dress up Leigh Hunt in this absurd fashion, than he had to tar and feather him—and we do not doubt, that if Leigh Hunt had ever had the misfortune to have been tarred and feathered, he would have written a sonnet on his plumification, and described himself as a Bird of Paradise. ”

“ Leigh Hunt has outlived all the enmities and enemies provoked either by his merits or his demerits, and is especially interesting as the sole survivor of the illustrious company of poets with whom the mind instinctively associates him. ”

“ As a matter of artistic propriety, it would have been delightful to see him inhabiting a beautiful house of his own, in an Italian climate, with all sorts of elaborate upholstery and minute elegances about him, and a succession of tender and lovely women to praise his sweet poetry from morning to night. I hardly know whether it is my fault, or the effect of a weakness in Leigh Hunt's character, that I should be sensible of a regret of this nature, when, at the same time, I sincerely believe that he has found an infinity of better things in the world whither he has gone. ”

“ Leigh Hunt takes high rank as an essayist and critic. The spirit of his writings is eminently cheerful and humanising. He is perhaps the best teacher in our literature of the contentment which flows from a recognition of everyday joys and blessings. A belief in all that is good and beautiful, and in the ultimate success of every true and honest endeavour, and a tender consideration for mistake and circumstance, are the pervading spirit of all his writings. ”

“ As a journalist no man did more than Leigh Hunt, during his thirteen years' connection with the 'Examiner,' to raise the tone of newspaper writing, and to introduce into its keenest controversies a spirit of fairness and tolerance.
In 1809 Hunt married Miss Marianne Kent. In the same year appeared 'An Attempt to show the Folly and Danger of Methodism ...,' a reprint, with additions, from the 'Examiner.' In 1810 his brother John started a quarterly magazine called 'The Reflector,' which Leigh Hunt edited. ”

“ But although hesitating himself to plunge into the impetuous torrent of passion, like the fowl mistrustful of its own fitness for so stormy waters, Leigh Hunt was the friend, instigator, and encourager of that rebellion of letters which in the earlier half of our age produced Keats and Shelley, and the poetical literature of the latter half of the nineteenth century. ”

“ Leigh Hunt is a clever wrong-headed man, whose vanities have got inwoven so deeply into him, that he has no chance of ever writing one line of classical English, or thinking one genuine English thought, either about poetry or politics? ”

“ Hunt’s London Journal with disdain. If he has anything to say against us or that gentleman, either conjunctly or severally, let him out with it in some other channel; and I promise him a touch and taste of the crutch. He talks to me of Maga’s desertion of principle; but if he were a Christian—nay, a man—his heart and his head would tell him that the Animosities are mortal, but the Humanities live for ever—and that Leigh Hunt has more talent in his little finger than the puling prig, who has taken upon himself to lecture Christopher North in a scrawl crawling with forgotten falsehoods. ”

“ We have often wished for such a book, and in our aspiration, the name of Leigh Hunt has ever presented itself as that of the man above all others qualified to do justice to so charming a subject.”—Morning Chronicle. ”

“ Hunt is no less faithful and no less touching. Those who knew Leigh Hunt, will see the bright face and hear the musical voice again, when he is recalled to them in this passage: “Even at seasons of the greatest depression in his fortunes, he always attracted many visitors, but still not so much for any repute that attended him as for his personal qualities. Few men were more attractive, in society, whether in a large company or over the fireside. ”

“ Leigh Hunt (born in 1784, and therefore Keats’s senior by some eleven years) is known to us all as a fresh and airy essayist, a fresh and airy poet, a liberal thinker in the morals both of society and of politics (hardly a politician in the stricter sense of the term) , a charming companion, a too-constant cracker of genial jocosities and of puns. He understood good literature both instinctively and critically; but was too full of tricksy mannerisms, and of petted byways in thought and style, to be an altogether safe associate for a youthful literary aspirant, whether as model or as Mentor. ”

“ There is no escape from the ugly truth that the brilliant, scholarly, irresistibly charming Leigh Hunt went to Italy with the purpose of fixing himself, his wife and children on a nobleman, with whom he had only the slightest acquaintance, and on a far from prosperous friend whose purse he had repeatedly laid under heavy requisitions, and with a clear intention of making them wholly responsible for the maintenance of himself and family for a considerable period. ”

“ He came to London this summer, but, I am sorry to say, did not inquire for me. As it turned out, I was absent from town, but sent him (by Mrs. Russell Sturgis) a letter of introduction to Leigh Hunt, who was very much pleased with him. Poor Hunt! he is the most genial of men; and, now that his wife is confined to her bed by rheumatism, is recovering himself, and, I hope, doing well. He asked to come and see me the other day. I willingly assented, and when I saw him—grown old and sad and broken down in health—all my ancient liking for him revived.
"You ask me to send you some verse. ”

“ Yet not to possess the works of Leigh Hunt is to be ill-equipped for the minute study of literary history at the beginning of the century. The original 1816 edition of Rimini, for instance, is of a desperate rarity, yet not to be able to refer to it in the grotesqueness of this its earliest form is to miss a most curious proof of the crude taste of the young school out of which Shelley and Keats were to arise. The scarcest of all Leigh Hunt's poetical pamphlets, but by no means the least interesting, is that whose title stands at the head of this chapter. ”

“ The title of On Leigh Hunt’s Poem, The Story of Rimini [186] speaks for itself. [187]
To put it briefly, the Poems of 1817 show Hunt’s influence in more ways than any equal number of the young poet’s later verses. It is seen in Keats’s subject matter [188] and allusions; in his adoption of a colloquial style and diction; in his absorption of Hunt’s spirit in the treatment of nature and in his attitude toward women; and in his imitation and exaggerated use of [Pg 58] the free heroic couplet in Sleep and Poetry, I stood tiptoe, Specimen of an Induction and other poems. ”

“ January, 1820, he wrote Georgiana Keats, “Upon the whole I dislike mankind.” [117] Haydon may have sincerely believed Hunt’s influence to be injurious because of the latter’s unorthodoxy in matters of religion. He wrote that Keats “could not bring his mind to bear on one object, and was at the mercy of every petty theory that Leigh Hunt’s ingenuity would suggest.... He had a tendency to religion when I first knew him, but Leigh Hunt soon forced it from his mind.... Leigh Hunt was the unhinger of his best dispositions. Latterly, Keats saw Leigh Hunt’s weaknesses. ”

“ At last they were caught tripping, and condemned to two years’ imprisonment for strictures ruled libellous, and really stinging as well as just, on the character and person of the Prince Regent. Leigh Hunt bore himself in his captivity with cheerful fortitude, and issued from it a sort of hero. Liberal statesmen, philosophers, and writers pressed to offer him their sympathy and society in prison, and his engaging presence, and affluence of genial conversation, charmed all who were brought in contact with him. ”

“ Leigh Hunt, as he is commonly called, was prominent before the public for fifty years as "a writer of essays, poems, plays, novels, and criticisms." He was born at Southgate, Middlesex, England. His mother was an American lady. He began to write for the public at a very early age. In 1808, In connection with his brother, he established "The Examiner," a newspaper advocating liberal opinions in politics. ”

“ As a poet Leigh Hunt showed much tenderness, a delicate and vivid fancy, and an entire freedom from any morbid strain of introspection. His verses never lack the sense and expression of quick, keen delight in all things naturally and wholesomely delightful. But an occasional mannerism, bordering on affectation, detracts somewhat from the merits of his poetry. His narrative poems, such as 'The Story of Kimini,' are, however, among the very best in the language. He is most successful in the heroic couplet. ”

“ He wrote in 1811: “I am no aristocrat, nor ‘crat’ at all, but vehemently long for the time when men may dare to live in accordance with Nature and Reason—in consequence with Virtue, to which I firmly believe that Religion and its establishments, Polity and its establishments, are the formidable though destructible barriers.” [214] Shelley knew of Leigh Hunt first as a political writer of considerable importance. In this respect he never ceased to admire him or to be influenced by The Examiner in the campaign against government corruption. ”

“ He was a descendant of Sir Thomas Leigh [q. v.] , lord mayor of London in 1558, and his grandmother on his father's side was Lady Caroline, daughter of Henry Brydges, second duke of Chandos, and sister of James, third duke of Chandos. Leigh Hunt, his father, was privately educated by Isaac Hunt, father of Leigh Hunt, who was named after the elder Hunt's pupil. Chandos, born in London on 27 June 1791, was educated at Harrow School, where he was a schoolfellow of Byron. ”

“ The complete and uniform issue, the want of which to some lovers of books (I own myself among them) is never quite made up by a scratch company of volumes of all dates, sizes, and prints, is indeed wanting. But still you can get a working Leigh Hunt together.
It is when you have got him that your trouble begins; and before it is done the critic, if he be one of those who are not satisfied with a mere compte rendu, is likely to acknowledge that Leigh Hunt, if "Ariel" be in some respects too{204} complimentary a name for him, is at any rate a most tricksy spirit. ”

“ Of Leigh Hunt’s attitude there can be no doubt, for through his long life of more than threescore years and ten, filled with many friendships of many kinds, he can in no instance be charged with insincerity. There is no conclusive proof on record to show him deserving of the insinuations which Keats believed in respect to Endymion, for Haydon is not trustworthy, and the opinion of a lady given through Haydon may be dismissed on the same grounds. ”

“ He at the same time entreats Hunt to intercede with Spenser on his behalf: and in the result it seems as though Hunt had stepped bodily in between them. In the handling of the metre, indeed, there is nothing of Hunt’s diluted Drydenism: there is the same direct though timid following of Elizabethan precedents as before, varied by an occasional echo of Lycidas in the use of the short six-syllable line:—
But in the style and sentiment we trace Leigh Hunt, or those elements in Keats which were naturally akin to him, at every turn. ”