Leigh Hunt's Relations with Byron, Shelley and Keats Part 22

[402] Monkhouse, _Life of Leigh Hunt_, pp. 64-65.

[403] II, pp. 145-146.

[404] _Autobiography_, II, p. 24.

[405] _Correspondence_, I, p. 188, July 8, 1822. Letter to his sister-in-law.

[406] _Letters and Journals_, VI, p. 97, July 12, 1822.

[407] _Recollections of the Last Days of Sh.e.l.ley and Byron_, I, p. 174.

[408] _Correspondence_, I, p. 192. October (?), 1822.

[409] _Letters and Journals_, VI, p. 160. January 8, 1823.

[410] _Ibid._, VI, pp. 171-173.

[411] _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_, pp. 50, 63.

[412] _Ibid._, p. 48.

[413] "_Blackwood's Magazine_ overflowed, as might be expected, with ten-fold gall and bitterness; the _John Bull_ was outrageous; and Mr.

Jerdan black in the face at this unheard-of and disgraceful union. But who would have supposed that Mr. Thomas Moore and Mr. Hobhouse, those staunch friends and partisans of the people, should also be thrown into almost hysterical agonies of well-bred horror at the coalition between their n.o.ble and ign.o.ble acquaintance, between the Patrician and the 'Newspaper-Man'? Mr. Moore darted backwards and forwards from Cold-Bath-Fields' Prison to the Examiner-Office, from Mr. Longman's to Mr.

Murray's shop, in a state of ridiculous trepidation, to see what was to be done to prevent this degradation of the aristocracy of letters, this indecent encroachment of plebeian pretensions, this undue extension of patronage and compromise of privilege. The Tories were shocked that Lord Byron should grace the popular side by his direct countenance and a.s.sistance--the Whigs were shocked that he should share his confidence and councils with any one who did not unite the double recommendations of birth and genius--but themselves!" (Hazlitt, _The Plain Speaker_, II, p.

437 ff.)

[414] _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_, p. 52.

[415] Galt in his _Life of Byron_ says: "Whether Mr. Hunt was or was not a fit co-partner for one of his Lords.h.i.+p's rank and celebrity, I do not undertake to judge; but every individual was good enough for that vile prost.i.tution of his genius, to which in an unguarded hour, he submitted for money." (P. 244.)

[416] _The Literary Gazette_ of October 19, 1822, was one of the notable opponents.

[417] _Life of Byron_, p. 239.

[418] _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_, p. 52.

[419] _Ibid._, p. 53.

[420] Byron, _Letters and Journals_, VI, p. 183.

[421] _Ibid._, VI, p. 124.

[422] _Ibid._, VI, p. 174, p. 182. (Letters to Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley.)

[423] _Ibid._, VI, p. 124.

[424] _Ibid._, V, p. 157, December 25, 1822.

[425] _Ibid._, VI, pp. 167-168.

[426] _Ibid._, V, p. 588.

[427] Lady Blessington, _Conversations of Lord Byron_, p. 77.

[428] _Letters and Journals_, VI, pp. 182-183, April 2, 1823.

[429] Hunt's only means of support were the income from his contributions to _Colburn's New Monthly Magazine_, from the _Wis.h.i.+ng Cap Papers_ in _The Examiner_, and an annuity of 100. (_Correspondence_, I, p. 227.)

[430] _Correspondence_, I, p. 233-234.

[431] _Correspondence_, I, p. 228. See Hazlitt's account of Hunt in Italy given in a letter from Haydon to Miss Mitford. (Haydon, _Life, Letters and Table Talk_, pp. 223-225.)

[432] Moore, _Memoirs_, IV, p. 220; V, p. 182.

[433] _Letters and Journals_, VI, p. 174, 1823.

[434] _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_, preface, p. 3.

[435] Clarke, _Recollection of Writers_, p. 230.

[436] But compare Hunt's own remarks on p. 40.

[437] The biographers of the two men have taken various att.i.tudes toward the value of _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_. Galt says that the pains Hunt took to elaborate faults of Byron make one think Hunt was treated according to his deserts, and that the troubles he labored under may have caused him to misapprehend Byron's jocularity for sarcasm, and caprice for insolence. (_Life of Byron_, p. 260.) Garnett considers the book a "corrective of merely idealized estimates of Lord Byron," and its "reception more unfavorable than its deserts." (_Encyclopaedia Britannica_, "Byron," Ninth Edition.) Nichol thinks that while the book was prompted by uncharitableness and egotism, Byron's faults were only slightly magnified: that the poetic insight, the cosmopolitan sympathy and courage of Hunt have given a view that nothing else could have done. (_Life of Byron_, p.

165.) R. B. Johnson thinks that it was a correct estimate written in self-justification. Undoubtedly it should not have come from Hunt, yet if it had not been written Hunt would not have been defended nor Byron so well known. He says there is "no reason to regret any part of the affair but the heated and persistent abuse with which one of the most sensitive and humane of men has been loaded on account of it." (_Leigh Hunt_, p.

50.) n.o.ble says that "Byron's friends met unpleasant truths by still more unpleasant falsehoods." (_The Sonnet in England_, p. 115.) Alexander Ireland, says the book was the great blunder of Hunt's life, "ought not to have been written, far less published." (_Dictionary of National Biography._)

[438] _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_, p. 89.

[439] _Ibid._, pp. 20-21.

[440] Byron, _Letters and Journals_, II, p. 208.

[441] _Ibid._, II, p. 461.

[442] Thornton Hunt, in his edition of his father's _Correspondence_, 1862, in this connection defended Byron, and credited him with "a strong sympathy with all that was beautiful and generous, with a desire to do right,

[443] P. 14. For an apology made six years earlier see a letter from Hunt to Thomas Moore. (_Correspondence_, II, p. 38.)

[444] Hunt, _A Jar of Honey from Mt. Hybia_, p. 155.

[445] II, pp. 90-93.

[446] _Charles Lamb and Some of His Companions_ in the _Quarterly Review_ of January, 1867.

[447] _A New Spirit of the Age_, p. 182.

[448] Near the close of his life Hunt wrote: "The jests about London and the c.o.c.kneys did not affect me in the least, as far as my faith was concerned. They might as well have said that Hampstead was not beautiful, or Richmond lovely; or that Chaucer and Milton were c.o.c.kneys when they went out of London to lie on the gra.s.s and look at the daisies. The c.o.c.kney School is the most ill.u.s.trious in England; for, to say nothing of Pope and Gray, who were both veritable c.o.c.kneys, 'born within the sound of Bow Bell,' Milton was so too; and Chaucer and Spenser were both natives of the city. Of the four greatest English poets, Shakespeare only was not a Londoner." (_Autobiography_, II, p. 197.)