LEIGH HUNT: AN IMPERFECT SYMPATHY.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 11110, 6 May 1911, Page 9

LEIGH HUNT: AN IM PERFECT SYMPATHY.

It was my fortune, when my sum . mers were few, to become acquainted with the earliest volumes of "Blackwood's Magazine," from 1817 onwards. I read them without understandiV much of what I read, and was ally interested in and horrified by the descriptions of a monster in human form and yellow breeches called LcMi Hunt. It a no hallucination of memonVerifying the reference, I find that th'is 1W» ": as v ' named ".veJlcw-hrocched Hunt. A disagreeable image was thus imprinted, on the early miml, and, to toll tho truth, it has never been „ ,j to eftacod, not even by Miss Jiernotto Millers book, "Leigh Hunt's Relations with Jiyron, Shelley, and Keats" (Collimbia l< Diversity Press, New York) Leigh Hunt was born in 1784, savs Miss M; or, went to Christ's Hospital in ]'!)!. left it in 179!). and started the hN.TMHMcr, a weekly paper, in ISO 3. I" nl.l ho was cnjailed, en enmbro wiirlflisn, for a libel on tho ]>rinw> KWlit, and "old friends gathered \ ohniit and new ones sought him as it martyr to tlic Liberal cause: surrounded by his books and pianoforte, Ins llmveri and plaster oasts." Snmohow I do not caro for this kind of martyr. - Before Hunt was penned in this loathsome dungeon ho had lingiin to mix up IH-p.rary criticism witli political runnnur, ami. to thn nnd of bia days, lir never nnuld kw;p politics (n;t (;'. "lilorature. I his is tho more surprising, as he had tho keenest powers of literary

appreciation. Tims in tho last cditioi UfciijO) of his "Feast of tho Poets' (1811) lie speaks of "Coleridge, \vhos< poetry's poetry's self." "I mean," h< writes in a note, "that it is a pun emanation of imaginative and musics feeling, without helps of accumulatior of thoughts, of images added for tin sake of display, or of anything thai would do as. well in proso"; ho her( speaks only of Coleridge's few essontial poems, and he speaks well. Bui in 1811 Hunt makes Apollo turn awaj from Coleridge; and, of Wordsworth, remarks : "Second chiklhtwl with him hat come close on tho first." Wordswortl: recites Some lines ho hat! made on a straw Show how lie had found it, am what'it was for. There was much more of this drivel wlnlo tho rhyme of "str-uv" and "for' stamped Hunt as being what "Blackwood's" young men called him, "Tin King of tho Cockneys." In 1859, an aged man, Leigh Html confessed that ho had no right to use [u tono of scornful intellectual superiority" towards Coleridge and Wordsworth. But his uniquo conceit, in 1811. was not more tho cause of his sfcupic insolence than his political hatred ol Wordsworth and Coleridge. Ho set ai: example of bringing political rancoui into literature, which his Tory foes, ill 1817, imitated and excelled: Hunt alsc displayed his scornful intellectual superiority towards Scott—"But prose sucl: as yours is a pure waste of time." Is a uoto Hunt added that "specimens abundantly nauseous" of Scott's reverence for "thrones" might he found in liis edition of Dryden, which has survived tho abuse of Hunt and tho lapse of a century. Scott's fault was to have spoken of Charles II as "merry, ,: "gay," "witty," and "good natural." Charles had all of these qualities; bill Scott is "the least scrupulous in mentioning his crimes, because he- is the least abashed." So ■Scott's candour is one of his offences! Hunt is particularly angry because Scott speaks ol Charles's "ungenerous attempt to destroy Lord Mulgravo in tho very act ol performing his duty." Probably, as Hunt says, the anecdote is false; bill if Scott believed it, ho did not blink if —though "ungenerous" is a queer wort to use in the case. Hunt actually believed, till tho end of his days, that hi; attack on Scott in 1811 was tho cause, six years later, of tho attacks on himself in "Blackwood's," and that Scoti wrote, or at least inspired, the odious articles on himself and the other members of, "Tho. Cockney School." Scqti once wrote to Maturin that, when violently assailed in tho press, he sometimes felt a desire to meet liis foe "where the muircock was bailie," or, ir tho Irish phrase, "on the sod." Ho repressed 'the inclination; but ho fell or no man with a dirty bludgeon. Hunt, in fact, had in many ways irritated two ■ young Tories, Wilson and Lockhart, who, in. 1817, did not know Scott, but were admirers of Wordsworth, and by no means shared Hunt's pro-French sentiments during the Napoleonic war. His poem, "The Story of Rimini" (1S16) was not calculated to please them, for Hunt wroto of "jaunty streams," and was rich in "pca-y greon-y bloominesses." To understand their emotions one must read "The Story of Rimini" in the first edjtion. Hunt's fees called it "tho genteel comedy of incest." In the first edition the jauiitincss is intolerable. Keats was entirely in the right when, in a sonnet on the Martyr of Freedom, lie spoko of Hunt as "Kind Hunt." Kind ho was, but his jaunty lack of taste was very soon discovered and resented by Keats, while Shelley seems never to have .found it out, which is a marvel. There is a published letter of Hunt to Shelley on the physical perfections of Mrs. Shelley II (Mary Godivin), on her sbaujplfr.s and brow as icon at tho Opera,' wiiich inspires olio vitli tho feelings excited in mankind )y Mr. Barnes iSowcomc. Wo wish to >eat Hunt on tho nose, to throw him mt of the window; but Shelley appears .o have seen no harm in Hunt's manier, and was, though very changeful n friendship, his constant friend, and, if course, his benefactor. The worst if it.for Keats was that Hunt, with lis. unerring -instinct, of appreciation vhero politics did not interfere, eer;aiiily "discovered" !nm. ; In Decemjer,."lßl6, Hunt wrote .of 'Kcats's early rcrses, "we had not read more.'than sixteen lines when wo recognised a rating poet indeed." Agsinj in a-son-iet; I see ev'n now t'oung Keats, a flowering laurel on your brow. Tho relations of the poet who discovers and of the younger poet who is discovered are very delicate. The elder bard !s apt to instiuct tho younger, anil [vcats for a year or so did copy Hunt's iaiintinoss. There are lines in his first I'olumo (1817) Vihich aro pure Hunt; t would bs cruel to quote them. To Saydon, tlie painter, Keats wrote- "I chink I could not be. deceived in tho manner that Hunt is—may I die tomorrow 1 if I am to be I There is no ;reatcr sin after the seven deadly ;han to flatter onseli into the idea of jeing a great poet." Hearing gossip, lerhaps' false, of Hunt's brags about tis influence on Keats's poems —"is not ill this a most paltry thing to think lbout?" wroto the author of "Endynion." He described Hunt's parlour ilique; his way of spoiling beautiful ;hings, "Hampstead, and sonnets, ami [talian talos," by his patronage, in alnost tho same terms as the fic.i<; Slaekwcodians. During his last jear of ifo Keats resided for some time with iunt, "who amuses me very kindly," it! said. But nothing could make them it one ,in taste and manners. In his 'Autobiography," written at tho closo )f his long life, Hunt says that, from Uonckton iVlilnes's collection of Keata's Letters and Remains, "I learned, with >xtrcinc pain, that Keats, at one period if his intercourse with us, suspected is both of a wish to seo him undervalued! Such are the tricks which :onstaiit. infelicity can play with the nost noble natures. For Shelley let Adonais' answer. ,, ' Now, neither Shelley nor Hunt wisheci :o sec Keats undervalued. Hunt had ilways, as a critic, valued him very uglily. But as to 'Adonais' answering i'or Shelley's actual opinion of Keats's pontic WDith, ;i ,attr from Shelley to Hunt, on Keats's last volume and his test, values it very low indeed and lppluuds Hunt's kindnojs in extracting ihb best passages in his' review. One loem Shelley selects as especially bad, Jtit tho editor who published the let- *• suppressed the name of this terrible poem. It is all very well to abuse Keats's hostile critics, '.vhese motive .vas political passion against a private 'riend of their political opponents, but, except Hunt—if we reckon him a poot —not one of EnuLmJ'a poi-ta of the lay appreciated Keats. Very probably 3cott never read him. Byron, in let;ers, donouneed him with incredible vioencc. Wordsworth ami Coleridge said lothiug. Shelley, in the aforesaid ler;er to Hunt, pooh-poohed Keats, and '. have not heard that Kcatx ever exiresfrxl any enthusiasm for the poetry if Shelley: in a well-known le'tor lie ulvisrd the author of "The Uovolt oi [slam" not to be diffuse, and to "load ?vory gift with goki." Excellent counsel ; but Shelley r-annot have thought it very sympathetic. However when Keats was dead, lulled by reviews, as iviis foolishly alleged. Shelley wrote his magnificent "Adoii:..i:;, ' either because his opinion of Ke.iU's poetic m<*its had suddenly changed, c-r for any other reasons. One may not have more than an imperfect sympathy with Hunt, but as regards appreciation of his great contemporary, liis position is solitary and enviable. There is always sen othing in Hunt that'arrests my sympathy. 7 could forgivo him for a long denunciation of the cruelty of Wordsworth's and Walton's favourite sport. 1 could

admire him as the- only poet of his gene-ration who wished to be a golfer, if he could, and a cricketer, too. But observo his rhymes: All manly games I'd play at—golf and quoits, And cricket, to set lungs and limbs to rights. What, a rhyme! —Andrew Long, in the "Morning' Tost."