Leigh Hunt's Relations with Byron, Shelley and Keats Part 8

The method of attack with the _Quarterly_ and with _Blackwood's_ was much the same. They differed chiefly in the style of approach. The former may be compared to heavy artillery, slow, c.u.mbrous and crus.h.i.+ng. The reviews indeed often verge on dullness and stupidity. Neither Gifford nor Southey seemed to have been blessed with the saving grace of humor in dealing with the c.o.c.kney School. _Blackwood's_, on the other hand, had too much, for whenever one of the so-called c.o.c.kneys was mentioned, its contributors wallowed in the mire of coa.r.s.e buffoonery and cruel satire, disgusting scandal and vulgar parody. The only counter-irritant to such a dose is the clever joking and keen humor; but even when this is clean, which is rare, the whole is rendered unpalatable by the thought of its cruelty and of its frequent falsity. Furthermore, _Blackwood's_ was more merciless in its persecution than the _Quarterly_ in that it was untiring. It was perpetually discharging a fresh fusilade. Both magazines disguised their real motives under a cloak of religious zeal and monarchical loyalty.

While Hunt did much to bring the hornet's nest about his ears, he was not wholly deserving of the amount, and not at all of the kind, of stinging calumny that he had to endure. Neither were the members of the c.o.c.kney School the only ones who provoked such antagonism from the same magazine.

Other famous libels of _Blackwood's_ that should be mentioned to show the disposition of its controllers were the _Chaldee Ma.n.u.script_; the _Madonna of Dresden_ and other effusions of the "_Baron von Lauerwinckel_"; the _Diary_ and _Horae Sinicae of Ensign O'Doherty_; and the _Diary of William Wastle, Blackwood and Dr. Morris_. _Letter to Sir Walter Scott, Bart., on the Moral and other Characteristics of the Ebony and Shandrydan School_,[456] cites a full list of _Blackwood's_ victims.

These, besides those of the c.o.c.kney School, were said to be Jeffrey, Professor Playfair, Professor Dugald Stewart, Professor Leslie, James Macintosh, Lord Brougham, Moore, Professor David Ricardo, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Pringle, Dalzell, Cleghorn, Graham, Sharpe, Jameson, and Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd. The characters in _Noctes Ambrosianae_, Ticklers, Scorpions and Shepherds, were said by the pamphleteer to respectively tickle, sting and stultify, and to make a business "of insulting worth, offending delicacy, caluminating genius, and outraging the decencies and violating all the sanct.i.ties of life." Their weapons were "loathsome billingsgate and brutality," and "sublime bathos." An interesting statement, not elsewhere found, is made by the anonymous author of the pamphlet that the proprietor of the Black Bull Inn imputed the death of his wife to the first volume of _Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk_, a series similar to the _Noctes Ambrosianae_. Sir Walter Scott is told that he cannot remain innocent if he remains indifferent to the machinations of the "Ebony and Shandrydan School"--as the writer pleases to call the _Blackwood's_ group. Another interesting pamphlet of like nature is _The Scorpion Critic Unmasked; or Animadversions on a Pretended Review of "Fleurs, a Poem, in Four Books," which appeared in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine for June, 1821, in a Letter to a Friend_.[457] _Blackwood's_ had called Nathaniel John Hollingsworth, the author of the poem, and others of his type, the "Leg of Mutton School."[458] Nothing in fact seems to have given this magazine so much malicious delight as to create schools, perhaps in a spirit of rivalry with the "Lake School" of the _Edinburgh Review_. In the preceding April the "Manchester School" had been presented by _Blackwood's_ to the public. Hollingsworth in turn created the "Scorpion School" in order to deride _Blackwood's_. Other pamphlets of the same kind were _Rebellion again Gulliver; or R-D-C-L-SM in Lilliput_. _A Poetical Fragment from a Lilliputian Ma.n.u.script_, an anonymous publication which appeared in Edinburgh in 1820; _Aspersions answered: an explanatory Statement, advanced to the Public at Large, and to Every Reader of The Quarterly Review in Particular_;[459] and _Another Article for the Quarterly Review_;[460] both by William Hone in reply to the charge of irreligion made by the _Quarterly_ against him.

William Blackwood, John Wilson or "Christopher North," Lockhart, and perhaps Maginn, share the blame severally of _Blackwood's_; while in the case of the _Quarterly_, to Gifford and Southey, already mentioned, must be added Sir Walter Scott and Croker. The two last certainly countenanced the actions of the others, even if they took no more active part. There seems to be no way of determining the individual authors.h.i.+p of the various articles. It was a secret jealously guarded at the time and it is unlikely that any further disclosures will come to light. The victims themselves hazarded as many guesses as more recent critics with no greater degree of certainty. Leigh Hunt thought that the articles were written by Sir Walter Scott;[461] Hazlitt said, "To pay those fellows _in their own coin_, the way would be to begin with Walter Scott _and have at his clump foot_;"[462] Charles Dilke thought that the articles were written by Lockhart with the encouragement of Scott;[463] Haydon thought that "Z" was Terry the actor, an intimate of the Blackwood party, who had been exasperated because Hunt had failed to notice him in _The Examiner_;[464]

Sh.e.l.ley fancied that the articles in the _Quarterly_ were by Southey, and, on his denial, attributed them to Henry Hart Milman.[465] Mrs. Oliphant in her two ponderous volumes, _William Blackwood and His Sons_, practically a.s.serts that "Z" was Lockhart.[466] If the extent of her research is to be the gauge of its value, her opinion is a very valuable one. Mr. Colvin advances the theory that "Z" was Wilson or Lockhart, possibly revised by William Blackwood.[467] Mr. Courthope thinks that Croker was the author of the articles on _Endymion_ in the _Quarterly_.[468] Mr. Herford thinks that the whole campaign against the c.o.c.kney School was "largely worked out" by Lockhart.[469]

Hunt, Sh.e.l.ley, Hazlitt and Keats were the chief targets in the c.o.c.kney School. The attacks on each of these are of such length as to require separate discussion and will be returned to later. Those who attained lesser notoriety were Charles Lamb, Haydon, Barry Cornwall, John Hamilton Reynolds, Cornelius Webb, Charles Wells, Charles Dilke, Charles Lloyd, P.

G. Patmore and John Ketch (Abraham Franklin). Those who moved within the same circle and who may by attraction be considered c.o.c.kneys are Charles Cowden Clarke and his wife, Vincent Novello, Charles Armitage Brown, the Olliers, Horace and James Smith, Douglas Jerrold, Joseph Severn, Laman Blanchard, Thomas Noon Talfourd, Thomas Love Peac.o.c.k, and perhaps Thomas Hood.

Charles Lamb was first attacked in 1820. He had written essays somewhat in the manner of Hunt and he was a contributor to the _London Magazine_, which had blundered by censuring Castlereagh, Canning, and Wilberforce.

The much-despised Hazlitt was another of its force. Accordingly, "Elia"

was p.r.o.nounced a "c.o.c.kney Scribbler," _Christ's Hospital_ an essay full of offensive and reprehensible personalities,[470] and _All Fool's Day_ "mere inanity and very c.o.c.kneyism."[471] In April, 1822, _Blackwood's_ returned to the attack but with more than usual good nature. In _Noctes Ambrosianae_ of that month Tickler is made to say:

"Elia in his happiest moods delights me; he is a fine soul; but when he is dull, his dullness sets human stupidity at defiance. He is like a well-bred, ill-trained pointer. He has a fine nose, but he can't or won't range. He always keeps close to your foot, and then he points larks or t.i.t-mice. You see him snuffing and snoking and brandis.h.i.+ng his tail with the most impa.s.sioned enthusiasm, and then drawn round into a semi-circle he stands beautifully--dead set. You expect a burst of partridges, or a towering c.o.c.k-pheasant, when lo, and behold, away flits a lark, or you discover a mouse's nest, or there is absolutely nothing at all. Perhaps a shrew has been there the day before. Yet if Elia were mine, I would not part with him, for all his faults."

A few years later Lamb became one of _Blackwood's_ contributors. Two attacks on Lamb proceeded from the _Quarterly_. The _Confessions of a Drunkard_, the writer says, "affords a fearful picture of the consequences of intemperance which we have reason to know is a true tale."[472] In his _Progress of Infidelity_, Southey a.s.serted that Elia's volume of essays wanted "only sounder religious feeling, to be as delightful as it is original."[473] Lamb's wrath had been slowly gathering under the strain of repeated attacks on Hunt, Hazlitt and himself. It culminated with Southey's article. In the _London Magazine_ of October, 1823, he repudiated at considerable length the compliments thrust upon him at the expense of his friends, and denied the arraignment of drunkenness and heterodoxy. Matters were then smoothed over between him and Southey through an explanation which his unfailing good nature could not resist.

Haydon was nick-named the "Raphael of the c.o.c.kneys."[474] Until the exhibition of _Christ's Entry into Jerusalem_ in Edinburgh in 1820, he underwent the same kind of persecution as his friends. His "greasy hair"

was about as notorious as Hazlett's "pimpled face." But the picture converted _Blackwood's_ crew. They apologized and confessed that their misapprehensions had been due to the absurd style of laudation in _The Examiner_. Henceforward they acknowledged him to be "a high Tory and an aristocrat, and a sound Christian."[475]

Bryan Waller Procter, or Barry Cornwall, was satirized in _Blackwood's_ for his so-called effeminacy. In October, 1823, the following facetious pa.s.sage occurs: "the merry thought of a chick--three tea-spoonsfulls of peas, the eighth part of a French roll, a sprig of cauliflower, and an almost imperceptible dew of parsley" would dine the author of _The Deluge_. The article on Sh.e.l.ley's _Posthumous Poems_ in the _Edinburgh_ of July, 1824, was attributed to Procter by _Blackwood's_ and a.s.sailed in a most disgusting manner. The article was by Hazlitt.

John Hamilton Reynolds was a friend of Keats, one of the _Young Poets_ reviewed by Hunt in _The Examiner_, and a contributor to the _London Magazine_. His two poems, _Eden of the Imagination_ and _Fairies_, showed Hunt's influence. In the former he had even dared to praise Hunt in the notes.

Cornelius Webb was the author of numerous poems which exhibit in a marked degree the Huntian peculiarities of diction pointed out in the first chapter. He is moreover responsible for the unfortunate lines so often quoted in derision by Blackwood's:

"Keats The Muses' son of promise! and what feats He yet may do."

His sonnets in the _Literary Pocket Book_ were thus reviewed in _Blackwood's_ of December, 1821: "Now, Cornelius Webbe is a Jaw-breaker.

Let any man who desires to have his ivory dislodged, read the above sonnet to March. Or shall we call Cornelius, the grinder? After reading aloud these fourteen lines, we called in our Odontist, and he found that every tooth in our head was loosened, and a slight fracture in the jaw. 'My dearest Christopher', said the Odontist, in his wonted cla.s.sical spirit, 'beware the Ides of March.' So saying, he bounced up in our faces and disappeared."

Charles Wells was a friend of Hazlitt and of Keats. In true c.o.c.kney fas.h.i.+on he sent the latter a sonnet and some roses and thus began the acquaintance. Dilke was a friend of Keats, a radical, and an independent critic in the manner of Hunt. Charles Lloyd was Lamb's friend, one of the contributors to the _Literary Pocket Book_ of 1820, and a poet of sentimental and descriptive propensities. P. G. Patmore was "Count Tims, the c.o.c.kney."[476] Although he was a correspondent of _Blackwood's_, his son has remarked that he was not _persona grata_, but was employed to secure news from London; and permitted to write only when he did not defend his friends too much.[477] "John Ketch" (Abraham Franklin) is mentioned by Lord Byron as one of the "c.o.c.kney Scribblers."[478] Thomas Hood, as brother-in-law of Reynolds, as a.s.sistant editor of the _London Magazine_, and as an imitator in a small degree in his early work of Lamb and of Hunt may be enumerated among the c.o.c.kneys, although he is not usually included. Laman Blanchard was the friend of Procter, Lamb and Hunt. He imitated Procter's _Dramatic Sketches_ and Lamb's _Essays_.

Talfourd was a member of the circle and the friend and biographer of Lamb.

He defended Edward Moxon when he was prosecuted for publis.h.i.+ng _Queen Mab_. Peac.o.c.k was the friend of Sh.e.l.ley. The Ollier brothers, publishers, introduced Keats, Sh.e.l.ley, Hunt, Lamb and Procter to the public.[479]

Although Byron was frequently at war with _Blackwood's_ and the _Quarterly_, and although he was closely a.s.sociated with Sh.e.l.ley and Hunt, he was never stigmatized as a member of the c.o.c.kney School. Yet through his alliance with them he came in for some opprobrium that he would otherwise have escaped. _Blackwood's_ strove through ridicule to prevent any growth of familiarity with Hunt or his fraternity. Its att.i.tude towards the dedication to Byron of the _Story of Rimini_ has already been mentioned. Hunt's statement already quoted on p. 95 that "for the drama, whatever good pa.s.sages such a writer will always put forth, we hold that he (Byron) has no more qualification than we have" was a choice morsel for the Scotch birds of prey, enjoyed to the fullest extent in a review of _Lyndsay's Dramas of the Ancient World_:

"Prigs will be preaching--and nothing but conceit cometh out of c.o.c.kaigne. What an emasculated band of dramatists have deployed upon our boards. A pale-faced, sallow set, like the misses of some c.o.c.kney boarding-school, taking a const.i.tutional walk, to get rid of their habits of eating lime out of the wall.... But it was reserved to the spirit of atheism of an age, to talk of a c.o.c.kney writing a tragedy.

When the mind ceases to believe in a Providence, it can believe in anything else; but the pious soul feels that while to dream, even in sleep, that a c.o.c.kney had written a successful tragedy, would be repugnant to reason; certainly a more successful tragedy could not be imagined, from the utter destruction of c.o.c.kaigne and all its inhabitants. An earthquake or a shower of lava would be too complimentary to the c.o.c.kneys; but what do you think of a shower of soot from a mult.i.tude of foul chimneys, and the smell of gas from exploded pipes. Something might be made of the idea.... The truth is, that these mongrel and doggerel drivellers have an instinctive abhorrence of a true poet; and they all ran out like so many curs baying at the feet of the Pegasus on which Byron rode ... and the eulogists of homely, and fireside, and little back-parlour incest, what could they imagine of the unseduceable spirit of the spotless Angiolina?... When Elliston, ignorant of what one gentleman owes to another, or driven by stupidity to forget it, brought the Doge on the stage, how crowed the Bantam c.o.c.ks of c.o.c.kaigne to see it d.a.m.ned!...

But Manfred and the Doge are not dead; while all that small fry have disappeared in the mud, and are dried up like so many tadpoles in a ditch, under the summer drowth. 'Lord Byron,' quoth Mr. Leigh Hunt, 'has about as much dramatic genius as _ourselves_!' He might as well have said, 'Lucretia had about as much chast.i.ty as my own heroine in Rimini;' or, 'Sir Phillip Sidney was about as much of the gentleman as myself!'"[480]

Byron's att.i.tude toward the c.o.c.kney School was expressed in a letter written to John Murray during the Bowles controversy:

"With the rest of his (Hunt's) young people I have no acquaintance, except through some things of theirs (which have been sent out without my desire), and I confess that till I had read them I was not aware of the full extent of human absurdity. Like Garrick's 'Ode to Shakespeare,' _they_ '_defy criticism_.' These are of the personages who decry Pope.... Mr. Hunt redeems himself by occasional beauties; but the rest of these poor creatures seem so far gone that I would not 'march through Coventry with them, that's flat!' were I in Mr.

Hunt's place. To be sure, he has 'led his ragam.u.f.fins where they will be well peppered'; but a system-maker must receive all sorts of proselytes. When they have really seen life--when they have felt it--when they have travelled beyond the far distant boundaries of the wilds of Middles.e.x--when they have overpa.s.sed the Alps of Highgate, and traced to its sources the Nile of the New River--then, and not till then, can it properly be permitted to them to despise Pope....

The grand distinction of the under forms of the new school of poets is their _vulgarity_. By this I do not mean that they are coa.r.s.e, but 'shabby-genteel,' as it is termed. A man may be _coa.r.s.e_ and yet not _vulgar_, and the reverse.... It is in their _finery_ that the new school are _most_ vulgar, and they may be known by this at once; as what we called at Harrow "A Sunday blood" might be easily distinguished from a gentleman, although his clothes might be the better cut, and his boots the best blackened of the two:--probably because he made the one or cleaned the other, with his own hands....

In the present case, I speak of writing, not of persons. Of the latter I know nothing; of the former I judge as it is found."[481]

Byron's opinion of Keats is too well known to need repet.i.tion. He thought there was hope for Barry Cornwall if "he don't get spoiled by green tea and the praises of Pentonville and Paradise Row. The pity of these men is, that they never lived in _high life_ nor in _solitude_: there is no medium for the knowledge of the _busy_ or the _still_ world. If admitted into high life for a season, it is merely as _spectators_--they form no part of the mechanism thereof."[482]

_Blackwood's_ of December, 1822, in a review of _The Liberal_, advised Byron to "cut the c.o.c.kney"--"by far the most unaccountable of G.o.d's works." Hunt is denominated "the menial of a lord." When Byron notwithstanding its advice continued his "conjunction with these deluded drivellers of c.o.c.kaigne" _Blackwood's_ grew savage towards the peer himself: it is said that he suffered himself

"to be so enervated by the unworthy Delilahs which have enslaved his imagination, as to be reduced to the foul office of displaying blind buffooneries before the Philistines of c.o.c.kaigne ... I feel a moral conviction that his lords.h.i.+p must have taken the Examiner, the Liberal, the Rimini, the Round Table, as his model, and endeavored to write himself down to the level of the capacities and the swinish tastes of those with whom he has the misfortune, originally, I believe, from charitable motives, to a.s.sociate. This is the most charitable hypothesis which I can frame. Indeed there are some verses which have all the appearance of having been interpolated by the King of the c.o.c.kneys."[483]

When Byron and Hunt had separated, _Blackwood's_ attempted to reinstate Byron in his former position by declaring that he had been disgusted beyond endurance on Hunt's arrival in Italy and that he had cut him very soon in a "paroxysm of loathing."[484]

The declaration of war between the c.o.c.kneys and the Tory press was made with a review of the _Story of Rimini_ in the _Quarterly_ of January, 1816. From this time on Hunt was the choice prey of the two magazines, and others were attacked princ.i.p.ally on account of him, or reached through him. Hunt's writings were termed "eruptions of a disease" with which he insists upon "inoculating mankind;" his language "an ungrammatical, unauthorized, chaotic jargon." _Blackwood's_ of October, 1817, contained the first of the long series of abusive articles which appeared in its columns. Hazlitt in the _Edinburgh Review_ in June of the preceding year had acclaimed the _Story of Rimini_ to be "a reminder of the pure and glorious style that prevailed among us before French modes and French methods of criticism." In it he had discovered a resemblance to Chaucer, to the voluptuous pathos of Boccaccio and to the laughing graces of Ariosto. To offset such statements _Blackwood's_ dubbed the new school the "c.o.c.kney School" and made Hunt its chief doctor and professor. (Later, in 1823, _Blackwood's_ proudly claimed the honor of christening and said that the _Quarterly_ used the epithet only when it had become a part of English criticism.) It declared the dedication to Byron an insult and the poem the product of affectation and gaudiness and continued:

"The beaux are attorney's apprentices, with chapeau bras and Limerick gloves--fiddlers, harp teachers, and clerks of genius: the belles are faded, fan-twinkling spinsters, prurient vulgar misses from school, and enormous citizen's wives. The company are entertained with luke-warm negus, and the sounds of a paltry piano forte.... His poetry resembles that of a man who has kept company with kept-mistresses. His muse talks indelicately like the tea-sipping milliner's girl. Some excuse for her there might have been, had she been hurried away by imagination or pa.s.sion; but with her, indecency seems a disease, she appears to speak unclean things from perfect inanition." Hunt "would fain be always tripping and waltzing, and he is very sorry that he cannot be allowed to walk about in the morning with yellow breeches and flesh-colored silk stockings. He sticks an artificial rosebud in his b.u.t.ton hole in the midst of winter. He wears no neckcloth, and cuts his hair in imitation of the prints of Petrarch."

Nature in the eyes of a c.o.c.kney was said to consist only of "green fields, jaunty streams, and o'er-arching leafiness;" no mountains were higher than Highgate-hill nor streams more pastoral than the Serpentine River.[485]

_Blackwood's_ was near the truth in its criticism of Hunt's conception of nature. While his appreciation was very genuine, it was restricted to rural or suburban scenes, "of the town, towny."[486] The scale was that of the window garden or a flower pot. Who but he could rhapsodize over a cut flower or a bit of green; or could speak in spring "of being gay and vernal and daffodilean?"[487] Yet he produced some delightful rural poetry. Take this for instance:

"You know the rural feeling, and the charm That stillness has for a world-fretted ear, 'Tis now deep whispering all about me here, With thousand tiny bus.h.i.+ngs, like a swarm Of atom bees, or fairies in alarm Or noise of numerous bliss from distant spheres."[488]

The general characteristics of the school, briefly summarized, were said to be ignorance and vulgarity, an entire absence of religion, a vague and sour Jacobinism for patriotism, admiration of Chaucer and Spenser when they resemble Hunt, and extreme moral depravity and obscenity. November, 1817, of _Blackwood's_ contained the notorious accusation against the _Story of Rimini_ of immorality of purpose.[489] The poem was called "the genteel comedy of incest." Francesca's sin was declared voluntary and her sufferings sentimental. The changes from the historical version, an espousal by proxy instead of betrothal, the omission of deformity, the subst.i.tution of the duel for murder, and the happy opening, were p.r.o.nounced wilful perversions for the furtherance of corruption. Ford's treatment of the same theme much more elevated. Hunt's defense was that the catastrophe was Francesca's sufficient punishment.[490] In May, 1818, the same charge was repeated: "No woman who has not either lost her chast.i.ty, or is desirous of losing it, ever read the 'Story of Rimini'

without the flus.h.i.+ngs of shame and of self-reproach."

_The Examiner_ of November 2 and 16, 1817, quoted extracts from the first of these articles and called upon the author to avow himself; otherwise to an "utter disregard of _Truth_ and Decency, he adds the height of Meanness and COWARDICE."[491] As might have been expected, this demand brought forth nothing more than a disavowal from the London publishers who handled _Blackwood's_ of all responsibility in the matter. June 14, 1818, _The Examiner_ a.s.sailed the editor of the _Quarterly_ as a government critic who disguised a political quarrel in literary garb, as a sycophant to power and wealth:

"Grown old in the service of corruption, he drivels on to the last with prost.i.tuted impotence, and shameless effrontery; salves a meagre reputation for wit, by venting the driblets of his spleen and impertinence on others; answers their arguments by confuting himself; mistakes habitual obtuseness of intellect for a particular acuteness, not to be imposed upon by shallow pretensions; unprincipled rancor for zealous loyalty; and the irritable, discontented, vindictive, and peevish effusions of bodily pain and mental infirmity, for proofs of refinement of taste and strength of understanding."

This condescension to a use of his enemies' weapons only weakened Hunt's position. Yet in the light of the secrecy maintained at the time and the mystery surrounding the matter ever since, it is interesting to read _Blackwood's_ contorted reply to Hunt's demand for an open fight, written as late as January, 1826:

"Nor let it be said that, either on this or any other occasion, the moral Satyrists (sic) in this magazine ever wished to remain unknown.

How, indeed, could they wish for what they well knew was impossible?

All the world has all along known the names of the gentlemen who have uttered our winged words. Nor did it ever, for one single moment, enter into the head of any one of them to wish--not to scorn concealment. To gentlemen, too, they at all times acted like gentlemen; but was it ever dreamt by the wildest that they were to consider as such the sc.u.m of the earth? 'If I but knew who was my slanderer,' was at one time the ludicrous skraigh of the convicted c.o.c.kney. Why did he not ask? and what would he have got by asking?

Shame and confusion of face--unanswerable argument and cruel chastis.e.m.e.nt. For before one word would have been deigned to the sinner, he must have eaten--and the bitter roll is yet ready for him--all the lies he had told for the last twenty years, and must either have choked or been kicked."

In January, 1818, _Blackwood's_ issued a manifesto of their future campaign. The Keatses, Sh.e.l.leys, and Webbes, were to be taken in turn. The charges of profligacy and obscenity against Hunt's poem were repeated, but it was emphatically stated that there was no implication made in reference to his private character--an ominous statement that any one with any knowledge of _Blackwood's_ usual methods could only construe into a warning that such an implication would speedily follow. The article was signed "Z," a shadowy personage who sorrowfully called himself the "present object" of Hunt's resentment and dislike. He seems to have expected grat.i.tude and affection in return for articles that would compare favorably with the most scurrilous billingsgate of any of the Humanistic controversies. In May, 1818, with due ceremony, Hunt was proclaimed "King of the c.o.c.kneys" and editor of the c.o.c.kney Court-gazette.

His kingdom was the "Land of c.o.c.kaigne," a borrowing, most probably, from the thirteenth century satire by that name. Keats's sonnet containing the line "He of the rose, the violet, the spring" became the official c.o.c.kney poem--by an "amiable but infatuated bardling." John Hunt was made Prince John. With the lapse of time Hunt's crimes seem to have multiplied. He is called a lunatic, a libeller, an abettor of murder and of a.s.sa.s.sination, a coward, an incendiary, a Jacobin, a plebeian and a foe to virtue. He is instructed, if sickened with the sins and follies of mankind, to withdraw

"to the holy contemplation of your own divine perfections, and there 'perk up with timid mouth' 'and lamping eyes' (as you have it) upon what to you is dearer and more glorious than all created things besides, till you become absorbed in your own ident.i.ty--motionless, mighty, and magnificent, in the pure calm of c.o.c.kneyism ... instead of rousing yourself from your lair, like some n.o.ble beast when attacked by the hunter, you roll yourself round like a sick hedgehog, that has crawled out into the 'crisp' gravel walk round your box at Hampstead, and oppose only the feeble p.r.i.c.ks of your hunch'd-up back to the kicks of any one who wishes less to hurt you, than to drive you into your den."

The _Quarterly_ of the same month contained the notorious review of _Foliage_. Southey, in a counterfeited c.o.c.kney style, contorts Hunt's devotion to his leafy luxuries, his flowerets, wine, music and other social joys into Epicureanism[492] and like unsound principles. He even goes so far as to accuse him of incest and adultery in his private life.

There are disguised but unmistakable references to Keats and to Sh.e.l.ley; the latter is credited with evil doings that fall little short of machinations with the devil. The volume of poems, which was the ostensible pretext for this parade of foul slander, not a word of which was true, has, Southey says, richness of language and picturesqueness of imagery.[493] The July number of _Blackwood's_ went a step beyond Southey and identified the characters of the _Story of Rimini_ with Hunt and his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Kent. After ostentatiously giving currency to the scandal, "Z" then proceeds to deny the rumor--which had no existence save in the minds of Hunt's vilifiers--in order to preserve immunity from libel. At the time that Lamb replied to Southey in 1823 he took up these charges made against Hunt in 1818. He said:

"I was admitted to his household for several years, and do most solemnly aver that I believe him to be in his domestic relations as correct as any man. He chose an ill-judged subject for a poem.... In spite of 'Rimini,' I must look upon its author as a man of taste and a poet. He is better than so; he is one of the most cordial-minded men that I ever knew, and matchless as a fireside companion. I do not mean to affront or wound your feelings when I say that in his more genial moods, he has often reminded me of you."[494]

A facetious bit of prose _On Sonnet Writing_ and a _Sonnet on Myself_ in _Blackwood's_ of April, 1819, parodied excellently the c.o.c.kney conceit and mannerisms. The September number contrasted Henry Hunt, the representative of the c.o.c.kney School of Politics, with Leigh Hunt, of the c.o.c.kney School of Poetry; resenting loudly the claim of the two to prominence for "even Dougla.s.ses never had more than one Bell-the-cat at a time." While Henry Hunt "the brawny white feather of c.o.c.kspur-street" addresses street mobs, the other Hunt, "the lank and sallow hypochondriac of the 'leafy rise'

and 'farmy fields' of Hampstead," "the whining milk-sop sonneteer of the Examiner" is said to speak to a "sorely depressed remnant of 'single gentlemen' in lodgings, and single ladies we know not where--a generation affected with headaches, tea-drinking and all the nostalgia of the nerves." It is hardly necessary to add that there was no connection whatsoever between the two men.