Leigh Hunt's Relations with Byron, Shelley and Keats Part 2

Shorter pieces were epistles to Byron, Moore, Hazlitt and Lamb--a kind of verse in which Hunt excelled, for his att.i.tude and style were peculiarly adapted to the familiar tone permissible in such writing. Among Hunt's best poems may be counted the sonnets to Sh.e.l.ley, Keats, Haydon, Raphael, and Kosciusko; those ent.i.tled the _Gra.s.shopper and the Cricket_, _To the Nile_, _On a Lock of Milton's Hair_, and the series on Hampstead. The suburban charms of Hampstead were very dear to Hunt and he never tired of celebrating them in poetry and in prose. No amount of derision from the _Quarterly_ or _Blackwood's_ stopped him. The general characteristics of _Foliage_ are much the same as those of the _Story of Rimini_. There are poor lines and good ones, never sustained power, and no poetry of a very high order. The subjects themselves are often unpoetical. Hunt obtrudes himself too frequently in a breezy, offhand manner. Byron's opinion of the book was scathing:

"Of all the ineffable Centaurs that were ever begotten by self-love upon a Nightmare, I think 'this monstrous Sagittary' the most prodigious. _He_ (Leigh H.) is an honest charlatan, who has persuaded himself into a belief of his own impostures, and talks Punch in pure simplicity of heart, taking himself (as poor Fitzgerald said of _him_self in the _Morning Post_) for Vates in both senses and nonsenses of the word. Did you [Moore] look at the translations of his own which he prefers to Pope and Cowper, and says so?--Did you read his skimble-skamble about Wordsworth being at the head of his own _profession_, in the _eyes_ of _those_ who followed it? I thought that poetry was an _art_, or an _attribute_, and not a _profession_; but be it one, is that ... at the head of _your_ profession in your eyes?"[90]

Other poems belonging to this period are _Hero and Leander_ and _Bacchus and Ariadne_ in 1819, and a translation of Ta.s.so's _Aminta_ in 1820. The first two show Hunt's faculty for poetical narrative and description, and, in common with Keats, a partiality for cla.s.sical subjects. The three are in no way radically different from the poems already considered.

The _Literary Pocket Book_ which Hunt edited in 1820, 1821 and 1822, the _New Monthly Magazine_ to which he began contributing in 1821, and the _Literary Examiner_, which he established in 1823, complete the enumeration of his writings during the period of his a.s.sociation with Byron, Sh.e.l.ley and Keats. Beyond the contributions of Sh.e.l.ley and Keats to the first and the reviews of Byron's poems in the third, they are unimportant here.

CHAPTER II

Keats's meeting with Hunt--Growth of their friends.h.i.+p--Haydon's intervention--Keats's residence with Hunt--His departure for Italy--Hunt's Criticism of Keats's poetry--His influence on the _Poems of 1817_.

It was about the year 1815 that Keats showed to his former school friend, Charles Cowden Clarke, the following sonnet, the first indication the latter had that Keats had written poetry:

"What though, for showing truth to flatter'd state, Kind Hunt was shut in prison, yet has he, In his immortal spirit been as free As the sky-searching lark, and as elate.

Minion of grandeur! think you he did wait?

Think you he nought but prison walls did see, Till, so unwilling thou unturn'dst the key?

Ah, no! far happier, n.o.bler was his fate!

In Spenser's halls he stray'd, and bowers fair, Culling enchanted flowers; and he flew With daring Milton through the fields of air: To regions of his own his genius true Took happy flights. Who shall his fame impair When thou art dead, and all thy wretched crew?"

This admiration, expressed before Keats had met Hunt, was due to the influence of the Clarke family and to Keats's acquaintance with _The Examiner_, which he saw regularly during his school days at Enfield and which he continued to borrow from Clarke during his medical apprentices.h.i.+p. Clarke later showed to Leigh Hunt two or three of Keats's poems. Of the reception of one of them (_How Many Bards Gild the Lapses of Time_) Clarke said:

"I could not but antic.i.p.ate that Hunt would speak encouragingly, and indeed approvingly, of the compositions--written, too, by a youth under age; but my partial spirit was not prepared for the unhesitating and prompt admiration which broke forth before he had read twenty lines of the first poem."[91]

Hunt invited Keats to visit him. Of this first meeting between the two men, Clarke wrote:

"That was a red letter day in the young poet's life, and one which will never fade with me while memory lasts. The character and expression of Keats's features would arrest even the casual pa.s.senger in the street; and now they were wrought to a tone of animation that I could not but watch with interest, knowing what was in store for him from the bland encouragement, and Spartan deference in attention, with fascinating conversational eloquence, that he was to encounter and receive.... The interview, which stretched into three 'morning calls', was the prelude to many after-scenes and saunterings about Caen Wood and its neighborhood; for Keats was suddenly made a familiar of the household, and was always welcomed."[92]

Hunt's account of the meeting is as follows:

"I shall never forget the impression made upon me by the exuberant specimens of genuine though young poetry that were laid before me, and the promise of which was seconded by the fine fervid countenance of the writer. We became intimate on the spot, and I found the young poet's heart as warm as his imagination. We read and we walked together, and used to write verse of an evening upon a given subject.

No imaginative pleasure was left untouched by us, or unenjoyed; from the recollections of the bards and patriots of old, to the luxury of a summer rain at our window, or the clicking of the coal in the winter-time. Not long afterwards, having the pleasure of entertaining at dinner Mr. G.o.dwin, Mr. Hazlitt, and Mr. Basil Montagu, I showed the verses of my young friend, and they were p.r.o.nounced to be as extraordinary as I thought them."[93]

Leigh Hunt discovered Keats, by no means a small thing, for as he himself has said: "To admire and comment upon the genius that two or three hundred years have applauded, and to discover what will partake of applause two or three hundred years hence, are processes of a very different description."[94] With the same power of prophetic discernment, writing in 1828, he realized to the full the greatness of Keats and predicted that growth of his fame in the future which has since taken place.[95] Keats's account of his reception is given in the sonnet _Keen fitful gusts are whisp'ring here and there_:

"For I am brimfull of the friendliness That in a little cottage I have found; Of fair hair'd Milton's eloquent distress, And all his love for gentle Lycid drown'd; Of lovely Laura in her light green dress, And faithful Petrarch gloriously crowned."

The date of the introduction of Keats to Hunt has been placed variously from November, 1815, to the end of the year 1816. He says:

"It was not at Hampstead that I first saw Keats. It was in York Buildings, in the New Road (No. 8), where I wrote part of the _Indicator_--and he resided with me while in Mortimer Terrace, Kentish Town (No. 13), where I concluded it. I mention this for the curious in such things, among whom I am one."[96]

If this statement were correct, it would make the meeting about two or three years later than has generally been supposed, for Leigh Hunt did not move to York Buildings until 1818, and he did not begin work on the _Indicator_ until October, 1819. Clarke states positively that the meeting took place at Hampstead. From this evidence Mr. Colvin has suggested the early spring of 1816 as the most probable date.[97] What seems better evidence than any that has yet been brought forward is a pa.s.sage in _The Examiner_ of June 1, 1817, in Hunt's review of Keats's _Poems_ of 1817, where he says that the poet is a personal friend whom he announced to the public a short time ago (this allusion can only be to an article in _The Examiner_ of December 1, 1816) and that the friends.h.i.+p dates from "no greater distance of time than the announcement above mentioned. We had published one of his sonnets in our paper,[98] without knowing more of him than of any other anonymous correspondent; but at the period in question a friend brought us one morning some copies in verse, which he said were from the pen of a youth.... We had not read more than a dozen lines when we recognized a young poet indeed." This seems conclusive evidence that the meeting did not take place until the winter of 1816, for Hunt's testimony written in 1817, when the circ.u.mstance was fresh in his mind is certainly more trustworthy than his impression of it at the time that he revised his _Autobiography_ in 1859 at the age of seventy-five years.

The two men, before they came in contact, had much in common, and Hunt's influence, while in some cases an inspiring force, more often fostered instincts already existing in Keats. Both possessed by nature a deep love of poetry, color and melody, and both "were given to 'luxuriating'

somewhat voluptuously over the 'deliciousness' of the beautiful in art, books or nature."[99] At the very beginning of their acquaintance, notwithstanding a disparity in age of eleven years, they were wonderfully drawn to each other. Spenser was their favorite poet. Both had a great love for Chaucer, for Oriental fable and for Chivalric romance, and an unusual knowledge of Greek myth. But even at the height of their intimacy, the friends.h.i.+p seems to have remained more intellectual than personal, a fact due no doubt to Keats's reserve and Hunt's "incuriousness."[100]

Except for this drawback Hunt considered the friends.h.i.+p ideal. He says: "Mr. Keats and I were old friends of the old stamp, between whom there was no such thing as obligation, except the pleasure of it. He enjoyed the privilege of greatness with all whom he knew, rendering it delightful to be obliged by him, and an equal, but not a greater delight, to oblige. It was a pleasure to his friends to have him in their houses, and he did not grude it."[101]

Through Hunt, Keats was introduced to a circle of literary men whose companions.h.i.+p was an important factor in his development, notably Haydon, G.o.dwin, Hazlitt, Sh.e.l.ley, Vincent Novello, Horace Smith, Cornelius Webbe, Basil Montagu, the Olliers, Barry Cornwall, and later Wordsworth.

For about a year following the meeting of the two, Hunt undoubtedly exerted the strongest influence of any living man over the young poet.

Severn said that Keats's introduction to Hunt wrought a great change in him and "intoxicated him with an excess of enthusiasm which kept by him four or five years."[102] Mr. Forman says that "Charles Cowden Clarke, as his early mentor, Leigh Hunt and Haydon as his most powerful encouragers at the important epoch of adolescence, must be credited with much of the active influence that took Keats out of the path to a medical pract.i.tioner's life, and set his feet in the devious paths of literature."[103] Keats's interest in his profession had decreased as his knowledge and love of poetry grew. With the publication of his _Poems_ in 1817, and his retirement in April of that year from London to the Isle of Wight "to be alone and improve" himself and to continue _Endymion_, his decision was finally made in favor of a literary life. Hunt's aid at this time took the practical form of publis.h.i.+ng Keats's poems in _The Examiner_ and of drawing the attention of the public to them by comments and reviews. Whether he ever paid Keats for any of his contributions to his periodicals is not known.[104] Through the influence of Hunt the Ollier brothers were induced to undertake the publication of Keats's first volume of poems. It is dedicated to Leigh Hunt in the sonnet _Glory and loveliness have pa.s.sed away_. The sestet refers directly to him:

"But there are left delights as high as these, And I shall ever bless my destiny, That in a time, when under pleasant trees Pan is no longer sought, I feel a free A leafy luxury, seeing I could please With these poor offerings, a man like thee."[105]

Hunt replied in the sonnet _To John Keats_, quoted here in full because of its inacessibility:

"'Tis well you think me truly one of those, Whose sense discerns the loveliness of things; For surely as I feel the bird that sings Behind the leaves, or dawn as it up grows, Or the rich bee rejoicing as he goes, Or the glad issue of emerging springs, Or overhead the glide of a dove's wings, Or turf, or trees, or midst of all, repose.

And surely as I feel things lovelier still, The human look, and the harmonious form Containing woman, and the smile in ill, And such a heart as Charles's wise and warm,-- As surely as all this, I see ev'n now, Young Keats, a flowering laurel on your brow."[106]

In 1820, Hunt dedicated his translation of Ta.s.so's _Aminta_ to Keats.

In spite of a eulogistic article by Hunt running in _The Examiners_ of June 1, July 6 and 13, 1817, and other notices in some of the provincial papers, the _Poems_ sold not very well at first, and later, not at all.[107] Praise from the editor of _The Examiner_, although offered with the kindest intentions in the world, was about the worst thing that could possibly have happened to Keats, for, politically and poetically, Leigh Hunt was most unpopular at this time;[108] and it was noised abroad that Keats too was a radical in politics and in religion, a disciple of the apostate in his attack on the established and accepted creed of poetry. As a matter of fact, Keats's interest in politics decreased as his knowledge of poetry increased, although, "as a party-badge and sign of ultra-liberalism," he, like Hunt, Byron and Sh.e.l.ley continued to wear the soft turn-down collars in contrast to the stiff collars and enormous cravats of the time.[109] In religion Keats vented his dislike of sect and creed on the Kirk of Scotland, as Hunt had on the Methodists. His "simply-sensuous Beauty-wors.h.i.+p" Palgrave attributes to the "moral laxity"

of Hunt.[110] Unless Palgrave, like Haydon, refers to Hunt's unorthodoxy in matters of church and state, it is difficult to understand on what evidence he bases this statement; in the first place, a charge of moral laxity is not borne out by the recorded facts of Hunt's life, but only by such untrustworthy tradition as still lingers in the public mind from the c.o.c.kney School articles of _Blackwood's_ and the _Quarterly_. Carlyle said that he was of "most exemplary private deportment."[111] Byron, Sh.e.l.ley and Lamb testified to his virtuous life. In the second place, a close comparison of the works of the two now leads one to conclude that "simply-sensuous Beauty-wors.h.i.+p" existed to a much higher degree in Keats than in Hunt, and that so strong an innate tendency would have developed without outward stimulus from any one. While both men sought the good and wors.h.i.+pped the beautiful, Keats, unlike Hunt, recognized somewhat "the burthen and the mystery" of human life.

Keats, during his stay in the Isle of Wight and a visit to Oxford with Bailey in the spring and summer of 1817, worked on _Endymion_, finis.h.i.+ng it in the fall. The letters exchanged between him and Hunt during his absence were friendly, but a feeling of coolness began before his return.

In a letter from Margate May 10, 1817, there is a curiously obscure reference to the _Nymphs_:

"How have you got on among them? How are the _Nymphs_? I suppose they have led you a fine dance. Where are you now?--in Judea, Cappadocia, or the parts of Lybia about Cyrene? Stranger from 'Heaven, Hues, and Prototypes' I wager you have given several new turns to the old saying, 'Now the maid was fair and pleasant to look on,' as well as made a little variation in 'Once upon a time.' Perhaps, too, you have rather varied, 'Here endeth the first lesson.' Thus I hope you have made a horseshoe business of 'unsuperfluous life,' 'faint bowers' and fibrous roots."[112]

A letter written by Haydon to Keats, dated May 11, 1817, warned Keats against Hunt, and, with others of its kind, was possibly the insidious beginning of the coolness which followed: "Beware, for G.o.d's sake of the delusions and sophistications that are ripping up the talents and morality of our friend! He will go out of the world the victim of his own weakness and the dupe of his own self-delusions, with the contempt of his enemies and the sorrow of his friends, and the cause he undertook to support injured by his own neglect of character."[113] A letter in reply from Keats, written the day after he wrote the pa.s.sage about the _Nymphs_, accounts for its dissembling tone:

"I wrote to Hunt yesterday--scarcely know what I said in it. I could not talk about Poetry in the way I should have liked for I was not in humour with either his or mine. His self delusions are very lamentable--they have inticed him into a Situation which I should be less eager after than that of a galley Slave,--what you observe thereon is very true must be in time [sic].

Perhaps it is a self delusion to say so--but I think I could not be deceived in the manner that Hunt is--may I die to-morrow if I am to be. There is no greater Sin after the seven deadly than to flatter oneself into the idea of being a great Poet...."[114]

To judge from the testimony of his brother George it is not surprising that Keats succ.u.mbed to Haydon's influence against Hunt: "his nervous, morbid temperament led him to misconstrue the motives of his best friends."[115] In the last days of his life, his suspicion and bitterness were general. In a letter to Bailey, June, 1818, Keats says: "I have suspected everybody."[116] 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. I distrusted his leader, but Keats would not cease to visit him, because he thought Hunt ill-used. This shows Keats's goodness of heart."[118] It is not to be regretted that Haydon lessened Keats's estimate of Hunt's literary infallibility, for his influence was most injurious in that direction; but it is to be regretted that he impugned a friends.h.i.+p in which Hunt was certainly sincere and by which Keats had benefited.

In September, just before Keats's return, he seems somewhat mollified and writes to John Hamilton Reynolds of Leigh Hunt's pleasant companions.h.i.+p; he has failings, "but then his make-ups are very good."[119]

On his return to Hampstead in October, 1817, Keats found affairs among the circle in a very bad way.[120]

Everybody "seems at Loggerheads--There's Hunt infatuated--there's Haydon's picture in statu quo--There's Hunt walks up and down his painting room--criticising every head most unmercifully. There's Horace Smith tired of Hunt. 'The web of our life is of mingled yarn.'... I am quite disgusted with literary men and will never know another except Wordsworth--no not even Byron. Here is an instance of the friends.h.i.+p of such. Haydon and Hunt have known each other many years.... Haydon says to me, Keats, don't show your lines to Hunt on any Account or he will have done half for you--so it appears Hunt wishes it to be thought. When he met Reynolds in the Theatre, John told him that I was getting on to the completion of 4,000 lines--Ah!

says Hunt, had it not been for me they would have been 7,000! If he will say this to Reynolds, what would he to other people? Haydon received a Letter a little while back on this subject from some Lady--which contains a caution to me, thro' him, on the subject--now is not all this a most paultry (sic) thing to think about?"[121]

Hunt had tried to persuade Keats not to write a long poem. Keats wrote of this: "Hunt's dissuasion was of no avail[122]--I refused to visit Sh.e.l.ley that I might have my own unfettered scope; and after all, I shall have the reputation of Hunt's eleve. His corrections and amputations will by the knowing ones be traced in the poem."[123]

During 1818, Leigh Hunt in his critical work remained silent concerning Keats, probably because of his sincere disapproval of _Endymion_ and secondly, because he realized that his praise would be injurious. The attacks on Hunt in _Blackwood's_ and the _Quarterly_ had foreshadowed an attack of the same virulent kind on Keats. The realization came with the publication of _Endymion_. The article on "Johnny Keats," fourth of the series on the c.o.c.kney School in _Blackwood's Magazine_, appeared almost simultaneously with his return from Scotland, and the one in the _Quarterly_ in September of the same year. These will be discussed in a later chapter. Suspicions of neglect on the part of Hunt murmured in Keats's mind like a discordant undertone, although the friends.h.i.+p continued as warm as ever on Hunt's part. Keats was pa.s.sive, without, however, the old sense of dependence and trust. December 28, 1817, he writes to his brothers of the "drivelling egotism" of _The Examiner_ article on the obsoletion of Christmas gambols and pastimes.[124] In a journal letter written to George Keats and his wife in Louisville during December and January, 1819, the old liking has become almost repugnance: "Hunt keeps on in his old way--I am completely tired of it all. He has lately published a Pocket Book called the literary Pocket-Book--full of the most sickening stuff you can imagine";[125] yet Keats suffered himself to become a contributor to this same book with two sonnets, _The Human Seasons_ and _To Ailsa Rock_. Again in the same letter:

"The night we went to Novello's there was a complete set-to of Mozart and punning. I was so completely tired of it that if I were to follow my own inclinations I should never meet any of that set again, not even Hunt who is certainly a pleasant fellow in the main when you are with him, but in reality he is vain, egotistical, and disgusting in matters of taste and morals. He understands many a beautiful thing; but then, instead of giving other minds credit for the same degree of perception as he himself possesses,--he begins an explanation in such a curious manner that our taste and self-love is offended continually. Hunt does one harm by making fine things petty and beautiful things hateful. Through him I am indifferent to Mozart, I care not for white Busts--and many a glorious thing when a.s.sociated with him becomes a nothing."[126]

Continuing in the same strain:

"I will have no more Wordsworth or Hunt in particular. Why should we be of the tribe of Mana.s.seh when we can wander with Esau? Why should we kick against the p.r.i.c.ks, when we can walk on Roses?... I don't mean to deny Wordsworth's grandeur and Hunt's merit, but I mean to say that we need not to be teazed with grandeur and merit, when we can have them uncontaminated and un.o.btrusive. Let us have the old Poets and Robin Hood."[127]

And again: