Born, at Southgate, 19 Oct. 1784. At Christ’s Hospital School, 1792–99. Contrib. to “Juvenile Library,” 1801; to “European Mag.,” 1801; to “Poetical Register,” 1801–11; to “The Traveller,” 1804–05. Clerk to his brother Stephen, 1803[?]–05. Dramatic critic to “The News” (started by his brother John), 1805. Clerkship in War Office, 1806[?]–08. Edited “The Examiner,” 1808–21; frequently contributed afterwards. Married Marianne Kent, 3 July 1809. Edited “The Reflector,” 1810. Imprisoned in Surrey gaol, for remarks in “Examiner” on Prince Regent, 3 Feb. 1813 to 3 Feb. 1815. Settled at Hampstead, 1816. Friendship with Shelley and Keats. Edited “The Indicator,” Oct. 1819 to March 1821. Edited, and wrote, “The Literary Pocket-Book,” 1819–22. Sailed for Italy, 15 Nov. 1821, but driven by storm to land at Dartmouth. Sailed again, May 1822; arrived at Leghorn, June. Contrib. to “New Monthly Mag.,” 1821–50. Edited “The Liberal” (with Shelley and Byron), 1822–23. To Genoa with Byron, Sept. 1822. In Florence, 1823–25. Edited “The Literary Examiner,” 1823. Returned to England, Sept. 1825. Lived at Highgate, 1825–28. Edited “The Companion,” Jan. to July, 1828. Contrib. to “The Keepsake,” 1828. Lived at Epsom, 1828–30 [?]. Edited “The Chat of the Week,” June to Aug. 1830. Edited (and wrote) “The Tatler,” 4 Sept. 1830 to 13 Feb. 1832. Lived in Chelsea, 1833–40. Contrib. to “Tait’s Mag.,” 1833; to “Monthly Chronicle,” Oct. 1838 to Feb. 1839. Edited “Leigh Hunt’s London Journal,” 1834 to Dec. 1835; “The Monthly Repository,” July 1837 to April 1838. Contrib. to “Musical World,” Jan. to March, 1839. Lived in Kensington, 1840–53. Play, “A Legend of Florence,” produced at Covent Garden, 7 Feb. 1840. Contrib. to “Westminster Rev.,” 1837; to “Edinburgh Review,” 1841–44; to “Ainsworth’s Mag.,” 1845; to “Atlas,” 1846; etc. Crown Pension of £200, Oct. 1847. Edited “Leigh Hunt’s Journal,” 1850–51. Lived in Hammersmith, 1853–59. Contrib. to “Musical Times,” 1853–54; to “Household Words,” 1853–54; to “Fraser’s Mag.,” 1858–59; to “Spectator,” Jan. to Aug. 1859. Died, at Putney, 28 Aug. 1859. Buried in Kensal Green Cemetery. Works: “Juvenilia,” 1801; “Classic Tales” (5 vols.), 1806–07; “Critical Essays on the Performers of the London Theatres” (from “The News”), 1807; “An Attempt to show the Folly … of Methodism” (anon., from “Examiner”), 1809; “Reformist’s Reply to the Edinburgh Review,” 1810; “The Feast of the Poets” (anon.), 1814; “The Descent of Liberty,” 1815; “The Story of Rimini,” 1816; “The Round Table” (with Hazlitt, from “Examiner,” 2 vols.), 1817; “Foliage,” 1818; “Hero and Leander,” 1819; “Bacchus and Ariadne,” 1819; “Poetical Works,” 1819; “The Literary Pocket-Book” (4 vols.), 1819–22; “The Months” (selected from vol. I. of preceding), 1821; “Ultra-Crepidarius,” 1823; “Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries,” 1828; “The Companion,” 1828; “The Tatler,” 1830–32; “Christianism” (anon.; priv. ptd.), 1832 (enlarged edn. called: “The Religion of the Head,” 1853); “Poetical Works,” 1832; “Sir Ralph Esher,” 1832; “The Indicator and the Companion” (2 vols.), 1834; “Captain Sword and Captain Pen,” 1835; “The Seer,” 1840–41; “The Palfrey,” 1842; “One Hundred Romances of Real Life” (from “Leigh Hunt’s London Journal”), 1843; “Poetical Works,” 1844; “Imagination and Fancy,” 1844; “Wit and Humour selected from the English Poets,” 1846; “Stories from the Italian Poets” (2 vols.), 1846; “A Saunter through the West-End” (from “Atlas”), 1847; “Men, Women and Books” (2 vols.), 1847; “A Jar of Honey from Mount Hybla,” 1848; “The Town” (2 vols.), 1848; “A Book for a Corner,” 1849; “Readings for Railways,” 1849; “Autobiography” (3 vols.), 1850; (later edns., expanded 1859 and 1860); “Table-Talk,” 1851; “The Religion of the Heart,” 1853; “The Old Court Suburb,” 1855; “Stories in Verse,” 1855; “Poetical Works” (Boston, 2 vols.), 1857. Posthumous: “Poetical Works,” ed. by his son, 1860; “Correspondence,” 1862; “Tale for a Chimney Corner,” 1869; “Day by the Fire,” 1870; “Wishing Cap Papers” (from “Examiner”), 1873. He translated: Tasso’s “Amyntas,” 1820; F. Redi’s “Bacchus in Tuscany,” 1825; and edited: Shelley’s “Masque of Anarchy,” 1832; Sheridan’s Dramatic Works, 1840; The Dramatic Works of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh and Farquhar, 1840; Chaucer’s Poems Modernized (with Horne and others), 1841; T. Hunt’s “Foster Brother,” 1845; “Finest Scenes” from Beaumont and Fletcher, 1855; “The Book of the Sonnet” (with S. A. Lee, posthumous), 1867. Life: “Autobiography,” 1850, etc., “Life,” by Cosmo Monkhouse, 1893.

Personal

	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, nobler 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?

  Leigh Hunt’s weather-cock estimation of you I cannot account for, nor is it worth while to attempt. He first attacks you when he had never read your works; then a friend, Barnes, brought him your “Excursion,” pointed out your sonnets, and Leigh Hunt began to find that he really should have looked through a poet’s works before he came to a conclusion on the genius displayed in them…. When first I knew Leigh Hunt, he was really a delightful fellow, ardent in virtue, and perceiving the right thing in everything but religion—he now finds “no end in wandering mazes lost,” perplexes himself, and pains his friends. His great error is inordinate personal vanity, and he who pampers it not, is no longer received with affection. I am daily getting more estranged from him; and, indeed, all his old friends are dropping off.

  Leigh Hunt is a good man and a good father—see his Odes to all the Masters Hunt;—a good husband—see his sonnet to Mrs. Hunt;—a good friend—see his Epistles to different people;—and a great coxcomb and a very vulgar person in everything about him. But that is not his fault, but of circumstances.

  Had I known a person more highly endowed than yourself with all that it becomes a man to possess, I had solicited for this work the ornament of his name. One more gentle, honorable, innocent and brave; one of the most exalted toleration for all who do and think evil, and yet himself more free from evil; one who knows better how to receive and how to confer a benefit, though he must ever confer far more than he can receive; one of simpler, and, in the highest sense of the word, of purer life and manners, I never knew.

	You will see Hunt—one of those happy souls
	Which are the salt of the earth, and without whom
	This world would smell like what it is—a tomb;
	Who is, what others seem; his room no doubt
	Is still adorned by many a cast from Shout,
	With graceful flowers, tastefully placed about;
	And coronals of bay from ribbons hung,
	And brighter wreaths in neat disorder flung,
	The gifts of the most learned among some dozens
	Of female friends, sisters-in-law and cousins.

  I have no quarrel with you, nor can I have. You are one of those people that I like, do what they will; there are others that I do not like, do what they may. I have always spoken well of you to friend or foe, viz: I have said you were one of the pleasantest and cleverest persons I ever knew; but that you teased any one you had to deal with out of their lives.

  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 I ever knew, and matchless as a fireside companion. I mean not to affront or wound your feelings when I say that in his more genial moods he has often reminded me of you. There is the same air of mild dogmatism—the same condescending to a boyish sportiveness—in both your conversations. His hand-writing is so much the same with your own, that I have opened more than one letter of his, hoping, nay, not doubting, but it was from you, and have been disappointed (he will bear with my saying so) at the discovery of my error. L. H. is unfortunate in holding some loose and not very definite speculations (for at times I think he hardly knows whither his premises would carry him) on marriage—the tenets, I conceive, of the “Political Justice” carried a little farther. For anything I could discover in his practice, they have reference, like those, to some future possible condition of society, and not to the present times. But neither for these obliquities of thinking (upon which my own conclusions are as distant as the poles asunder)—not for his political asperities and petulancies, which are wearing out with the heats and vanities of youth—did I select him for a friend; but for qualities which fitted him for that relation.

  He is a man of thoroughly London make, such as you could not find elsewhere, and I think about the best possible to be made of this sort: an airy, crotchety, most copious clever talker, with an honest undercurrent of reason too, but unfortunately not the deepest, not the most practical—or rather it is the most unpractical ever man dealt in. His hair is grizzled, eyes black-hazel, complexion of the clearest dusky brown; a thin glimmer of a smile plays over a face of cast-iron gravity. He never laughs—can only titter, which I think indicates his worst deficiency…. His house excels all you have read of,—a poetical Tinkerdom, without parallel even in literature. In his family room, where are a sickly large wife and a whole shoal of well-conditioned wild children, you will find half a dozen old rickety chairs gathered from half-a-dozen different hucksters, and all seemingly engaged, and just pausing, in a violent hornpipe. On these and around them and over the dusty table and ragged carpet lie all kinds of litter,—books, papers, egg-shells, scissors, and last night when I was there the torn heart of a half-quartern loaf. His own room above stairs, into which alone I strive to enter, he keeps cleaner. It has only two chairs, a bookcase, and a writing-table; yet the noble Hunt receives you in his Tinkerdom in the spirit of a king, apologizes for nothing, places you in the best seat, takes a window-sill himself if there is no other, and there folding closer his loose-flowing “muslin cloud” of a printed nightgown, in which he always writes, commences the liveliest dialogue on philosophy and the prospects of man (who is to be beyond measure “happy” yet); which again he will courteously terminate the moment you are bound to go: a most interesting, pitiable, lovable man, to be used kindly but with discretion.

  He lives far from town,—in Chelsea,—in a humble house, with uncarpeted entry and stairs. He lives more simply, I think, than any person I have visited in England; but he possesses a palace of a mind. He is truly brilliant in conversation, and the little notes of his which I have seen are very striking. He is of about the middle size, with iron-gray hair parted in the middle, and suffered to grow quite long.

  I felt age coming on me, and difficulties not lessened by failing projects: nor was I able, had I ever been so inclined, to render my faculties profitable “in the market.”… A man only can do what he can do, or as others will let him. Suppose he has a conscience that will not suffer him to reproduce the works of other people, or even to speak what he thinks commonplace enough to have become public property. Suppose his conscience will not allow him to accommodate himself to the opinion of editors and reviewers. Suppose the editors and reviewers themselves will not encourage him to write on the subjects he understands best, perhaps do not understand the subjects themselves; or, at least, play with him, and delay him, and keep him only as a resource when their own circle fails them. Suppose he has had to work his way up through animosities, political and religious, and through such clouds of adversity as, even when they have passed away, leave a chill of misfortune round his repute, and make “prosperity” slow to encourage him. Suppose, in addition to all this, he is in bad health, and of fluctuating as well as peculiar powers; of a temperament easily solaced in mind, and as easily drowsed in body; quick to enjoy every object in creation, every thing in nature and in art, every sight, every sound, every book, picture, and flower, and at the same time really qualified to do nothing, but either to preach the enjoyment of these objects in modes derived from his own particular nature and breeding, or to suffer with mingled cheerfulness and poverty the consequences of advocating some theory on the side of human progress. Great may sometimes be the misery of that man under the necessity of requesting forbearance or undergoing obligation; and terrible will be his doubts, whether some of his friends may not think he had better have had a conscience less nice, or activity less at the mercy of his physique.

  Leigh Hunt was there, with his cheery face, bright, acute, and full of sensibility; and his thick grizzled hair combed down smooth, and his homely figure;—black handkerchief, grey stockings and stout shoes, while he was full of gratitude to ladies who dress in winter in velvet, and in rich colours; and to old dames in the streets or the country who still wear scarlet cloaks. His conversation was lively, rapid, highly illustrative, and perfectly natural.

  Towards the end of June, 1822, the long-expected family of the Hunts arrived by sea from England…. I found him a gentleman and something more; and with a quaint fancy and cultivated mind. He was in high spirits, and disposed to be pleased with others. His anticipated literary projects in conjunction with Byron and Shelley were a source of great pleasure to him—so was the land of beauty and song.

  Drove to Hammersmith, where we found Leigh Hunt and his two daughters awaiting us. It was a very tiny cottage, with white curtains and flowers in the window, but his beautiful manner made it a rich abode. The dear old man talked delightfully about his flowers, calling them “gentle household pets.”

  I found Leigh Hunt living in a pleasant little cottage at Hammersmith…. On entering the little parlor, used as a “study,” a tall figure, dressed in a morning gown, with a large cape, came forward and grasped my hand with a sort of feminine tenderness and enthusiasm…. Leigh Hunt is now nearly eighty years of age; and yet his complexion has the fairness and freshness of youth. His hair is as white as the bloom of an almond tree, and as full and glossy as the head of a child. His brow is broad and beautiful, and his eye as gentle and as clear as that of a woman who has never seen a cloudy day. His heart is as merry as a bird’s and his look and manner alternately playful and pensive, but without a shadow of sadness.

  One characteristic of Leigh Hunt, for which few gave him credit, was his great capacity for work. His writings were the result of immense labor and painstaking, of the most conscientious investigation of facts, where facts were needed; and of a complete devotion of his faculties towards the object to be accomplished. Notwithstanding his great experience, he was never a very rapid writer. He corrected, excised, reconsidered, and elaborated his productions (unless pressed for time), with the most minute attention to details.

  An odd declaration by Dickens that he did not mean Leigh Hunt by Harold Skimpole. Yet he owns that he took the light externals of the character from Leigh Hunt, and surely it is by those light externals that the bulk of mankind will always recognize character. Besides, it is to be observed that the vices of Harold Skimpole are vices to which Leigh Hunt had, to say the least, some little leaning, and which the world generally imputed to him most unsparingly. That he had loose notions of meum and tuum, that he had no high feeling of independence, that he had no sense of obligation, that he took money wherever he could get it, that he felt no gratitude for it, that he was just as ready to defame a person who had relieved his distress as a person who had refused him relief,—these were things which, as Dickens must have known, were said, truly or falsely, about Leigh Hunt and had made a deep impression on the public mind. Indeed, Leigh Hunt had said himself: “I have some peculiar notions about money. They will be found to involve considerable difference of opinion with the community, particularly in a commercial country. I have not that horror of being under obligation which is thought an essential refinement in money matters.” That is Harold Skimpole all over. How then could D. doubt that H. S. would be supposed to be a portrait of L. H.?

  Four or five years ago, the writer of these lines was much pained by accidentally encountering a printed statement, that Mr. Leigh Hunt was the original of Harold Skimpole in “Bleak House.”… The fact is this:—Exactly those graces and charms of manner which are remembered in the words we have quoted, were remembered by the author of the work of fiction in question, when he drew the character in question. Above all other things, that “sort of gay and ostentatious wilfulness” in the humoring of a subject, which had many a time delighted him, and impressed him as being unspeakably whimsical and attractive, was the airy quality he wanted for the man he invented. Partly for this reason, and partly (he has since often grieved to think) for the pleasure it afforded him to find that delightful manner reproducing itself under his hand, he yielded to the temptation of too often making the character speak like his old friend. He no more thought—God forgive him! that the admired original would ever be charged with the imaginary vices of the fictitious creature, than he has himself ever thought of charging the blood of Desdemona and Othello, on the innocent Academy model who sat for Iago’s leg in the picture.

  His whole life was one of pecuniary anxiety. His father was a refugee from America, the representative of a Barbados family, whose fortunes had declined; and although Isaac Hunt was a man who could at dangerous junctures put forth resolution and energy, it seems evident that he was inclined to repose on the traditions of his family, and on a vague general hopefulness, rather than active endeavour. Emerging from the Bluecoat School, Leigh Hunt found himself placed in the hereditary condition of an impoverished relative; and the employment sought for him was such as could be found, rather than such as suited either his natural disposition or his training, which had been exclusively scholastic. By the force of accidental circumstances, he became … a writer for the periodical press, in itself not a very certain mode of livelihood, and one not calculated to develop regular business habits. In addition to these untoward circumstances, there was a peculiarity of his character—it was no affectation when he declared himself entirely incompetent to deal with the simplest question of arithmetic. The very commonest sum was a bewilderment to him. He learned addition in order that he might be fitted for his place in a public office. It was a born incapacity, similar to that of people who cannot distinguish the notes of music or the colours of the prism. Perpetually reproached with it, very conscious of his mistakes, he took his deficiency to heart, and, with the emphatic turn of his temperament, increased it by exaggerating his own estimate of it. Thus he regarded himself as a sort of idiot in the handling of figures; and he was consequently incapacitated for many subjects which he could handle very well when they were explained to him in another form. A secondary consequence was the habit, acquired very early, of trusting to others.

  I have said that he was a beautiful old man. In truth, I never saw a finer countenance, either as to the mould of features or the expression, nor any that showed the play of feeling so perfectly without the slightest theatrical emphasis. It was like a child’s face in this respect. At my first glimpse of him, when he met us in the entry, I discerned that he was old, his long hair being white and his wrinkles many; it was an aged visage, in short, such as I had not at all expected to see, in spite of dates, because his books talk to the reader with the tender vivacity of youth. But when he began to speak, and as he grew more earnest in conversation, I ceased to be sensible of his age; sometimes, indeed, its dusky shadow darkened through the gleam which his sprightly thoughts diffused about his face, but then another flash of youth came out of his eyes and made an illumination again. I never witnessed such a wonderfully illusive transformation, before or since; and, to this day, trusting only to my recollection, I should find it difficult to decide which was his genuine and stable predicament,—youth or age. I have met no Englishman whose manners seemed to me so agreeable, soft, rather than polished, wholly unconventional, the natural growth of a kindly and sensitive disposition without any reference to rule, or else obedient to some rule so subtle that the nicest observer could not detect the application of it. His eyes were dark and very fine, and his delightful voice accompanied their visible language like music…. He must have suffered keenly in his lifetime, and enjoyed keenly, keeping his emotions so much upon the surface as he seemed to do, and convenient for everybody to play upon. Being of a cheerful temperament, happiness had probably the upperhand. His was a light, mildly joyous nature, gentle, graceful, yet seldom attaining to that deepest grace which results from power.

  He was held up to shame as an enemy of religion, whereas he was a man from whose heart there came a flowing pity spreading itself over all nature and in every channel in which it was possible to run. I remember a passage in one of his writings in which he says he never passed a church, of however unreformed a faith, without an instinctive wish to go in and worship for the good of mankind. And all this obloquy, all this injustice, all this social cruelty never for one moment soured the disposition or excited a revengeful feeling in the breast of this good man. He had as it were—I have no other phrase for it—a superstition of good. He did not believe in the existence of evil, and when it pressed against him, in the bitterest form against himself, he shut his eyes to it…. We know that through all the difficulties of a more than usually hard life he kept to the end a cheerfulness of temper which the most successful might have envied.

  To be seated at the same table with Leigh Hunt was, I thought, like seeing Byron and Shelley by reflected light; and I could not but watch, with a curiosity amounting almost to awe, every movement of his face, and every word that fell from his lips. True, I soon discovered that, after all, he was but a mortal man, and that, despite the history of his past career, he talked and acted as a being of ordinary instincts rather than as one who might be supposed to have wings to fly with. Still I was constantly reminded of the indisputable fact that Leigh Hunt was “somebody,” and that I was assuredly complimented in being brought into such close companionship with him. I hardly dare venture to describe his personal appearance, further than to say he looked the man of that refined intellectual power which had given him his place in the literature of his time; that his complexion seemed strangely to harmonize with his hair (for he wore no whiskers, and moustaches at that time had not found their way to this country), in one uniform tint of iron-gray; and that his shirt-collar ascended from his neck in a négligé manner, which might be considered slovenly, but which was picturesquely effective in its loose luxuriance. There was, moreover, a sort of valetudinarian air about him, and he appeared extremely particular as to what he ate and drank, preferring, he said, the mildest form of nutriment, such as he was accustomed to at home—“just the wing of a chicken,” and “only a moderate quantity of sherry and water” being especially demanded…. At length our host prevailed upon his distinguished visitor himself to “favor us with a tune”—a knowledge of music being known to be one of Mr. Hunt’s accomplishments. With this request he most readily complied, and good-humoredly observed, “I will give you a favorite barcarolle which I was in the habit of playing to Birron and Shelley in Italy” (he pronounced the first name as if it were spelt as I have written it—with two rr’s and the “i” short). He executed the task with a spirit and delicacy which could hardly have been expected from an amateur who had passed the greater part of his days in the cultivation of literature.

  I well remember the last time I saw him at Hammersmith, not long before his death in 1859, when, with his delicate, worn, but keenly intellectual face, his large, luminous eyes, his thick shock of wiry gray hair, and a little cape of faded black silk over his shoulders, he looked like an old French Abbé.

  Hunt was a little above the middle size, thin and lithe. His countenance was very genial and pleasant. His hair was black; his eyes were very dark, but he was short-sighted, and therefore perhaps it was that they had nothing of that fierce glance which black eyes so frequently possess. His mouth was expressive, but protruding; as is sometimes seen in half-caste Americans…. Leigh Hunt was always in trouble about money; but he was seldom sad, and never sour. The prospect of poverty did not make much impression on him who never possessed wealth…. Hunt had a crotchet or theory about social intercourse (between the sexes), to which he never made any converts. He was at one time too frequently harping on this subject. This used to irritate Hazlitt, who said, “D—— him; it’s always coming out like a rash. Why doesn’t he write a book about it, and get rid of it.” Hunt did not press these opinions upon any one to a pitch of offence. He himself led a very domestic and correct life. And I am bound to say that, during an intimacy of many (forty) years, I never heard him utter an oath, although they were then very common; and I never heard from him an indelicate hint or allusion.

  Leigh Hunt’s inability to appreciate the comparative value of monies was well known. It was real, not affected. I have seen it myself more than once. For that, his conversation, and his brilliant touch on the piano, was he best known socially. I am a staunch admirer of Dickens, but I cannot waver in my belief that Leigh Hunt was the model of “Horace Skimpole,” at least until that lightsome individual began to exhibit his darker shades. The similarity is too marked in more things than can be mentioned here. I know that Dickens denied this, and that there is nothing more to be said; but the very first time I read the very first number of “Bleak House,” which describes Skimpole, I said “There is Leigh Hunt!”

  As to Leigh Hunt’s friendship for Keats, I think the points you mention loom equivocal, but Hunt was a many-laboured and much belaboured man, and as much allowance as may be made on this score is perhaps due to him—no more than that much. His own powers stand high in various ways—poetically higher perhaps than is at present admitted, despite his detestable flutter and airiness for the most part. But assuredly by no means could he have stood so high in the long run, as by a loud and earnest defence of Keats. Perhaps the best excuse for him is the remaining possibility of an idea on his part, that any defence coming from one who had himself so many powerful enemies might seem to Keats rather to damage than improve his position.

  Leigh Hunt attempted no defence for Keats when the bread was taken out of his mouth, and that Keats felt this neglect and remarked upon it in a letter in which he further cast some doubt upon the purity of Hunt’s friendship. Hunt, after Keats’s death, said in reference to this: “Had he but given me the hint!” The hint, forsooth! Moreover, I can find no sort of allusion in The Examiner for 1821, to the death of Keats. I told Rossetti that by the reading of the periodicals of the time, I formed a poor opinion of Hunt. Previously I was willing to believe in his unswerving loyalty to the much greater men who were his friends, but even that poor confidence in him must perforce be shaken when one finds him silent at a moment when Keats most needs his voice, and abusive when Coleridge is a common subject of ridicule. It was all very well for Hunt to glorify himself in the borrowed splendour of Keats’s established fame when the poet was twenty years dead, and to make much of his intimacy with Coleridge after the homage of two generations had been offered him, but I know of no instance (unless in the case of Shelley) in which Hunt stood by his friends in the winter of their lives, and gave them that journalistic support which was, poor man, the only thing he ever had to give, whatever he might take. I have, however, heard Mr. H. A. Bright (one of Hawthorne’s intimate friends in England) say that no man here impressed the American romancer as much as Hunt for good qualities, both of heart and head.

  Leigh Hunt’s sensitive delicacy was one of his most marked characteristics, and one that peculiarly impressed itself on those who enjoyed personal communion with him. He was delicate as a woman in conduct, in words, in ways of thinking. I have heard him use paraphrase in speaking of things that the generality of men are accustomed to mention plainly, as a matter of course; and though he could—on occasion—use very straightforward terms in treating a poetical subject warmly, or in reprobating a vice sternly, and employ very playful terms when treating a humorous subject wittily, I never heard him utter a coarse or a light word in the many times I have heard him converse with freedom among intimate friends. Airy elegance, sportive fancy, marked his lively talk; levity never.

  I did not know Leigh Hunt in his prime; but I knew him well when he lived at Edwardes Square, Kensington. He was then yielding gradually to the universal conqueror. His son tells us, “He was usually seen in a dressing-gown, bending his head over a book or over a desk.” Tall and upright still, his hair white and straggling, scattered over a brow of manly intelligence, his eyes retaining much of their old brilliancy combined with gentleness, his conversation still sparkling, though by fits and starts—he gave me the idea of a sturdy ruin that, in donning the moss vest of time, had been recompensed for gradual decay of strength by gaining ever more and more of the picturesque…. Testimonies to his nature are abundant. His famous sonnet, “Abou Ben Adhem,” may have been inspired by an Eastern apothegm, but it was none the less an outpouring of his own large heart. As for his life it was one of the utmost simplicity and frugality; indeed, he carried the latter virtue to such an extreme that his son, in writing to me, describes his father’s diet as consisting often only of bread.

  He was an old man with snowy hair…. But his eyes were still brilliant, and the fascinating grace of his manner was unimpaired. He was naturally rather tall and of a slender figure, but incessant daily toil at the desk caused him to stoop somewhat, though his son says of him, “he was straight as an arrow and looked slenderer than he really was,” but this was in earlier years, before time and toil had left their impress. At the period of our visit, Leigh Hunt had reached his seventy-fifth year…. But Leigh Hunt was there, with his elegance and charm, like a prince in hiding…. He wore the dignity and sweetness of a man not only independent of worldly ambitions, but one dependent upon unworldly satisfactions. There was no sense of defeat because he was a poor man, nor even of inadequacy, except for lack of time and strength to “entertain strangers.” He wore the air of a noble laborer—ceaseless, indefatigable; and when we remember that the wolf was driven from his door through so long a life by his busy pen, a pen unarmed with popular force, he might well feel that the struggle had been an honorable one.

  When I first knew Leigh Hunt he was verging on fifty-five, and resided in Edwardes Square, Kensington, the region which furnished him with material for one of the most agreeable of his books, “The Old Court Suburb.” From the airy, lightsome cheeriness of so many of his writings, I had expected to find him all briskness and vivacity. On the contrary, as he sat and talked among his books, busts, and engravings, tall, dark-complexioned, with thoughtful brow and expressive hazel eyes, his grayish-black hair flowing down to his shoulders, he gave you the impression of courteous dignity and repose. In a grave, sweet voice, he spoke frankly, but always kindly, of the notable men with whom he had been intimate, and of whom a junior as I was might wish to hear, Shelley and Keats, Hazlitt and Charles Lamb. Of his later and then living contemporaries it was Thackeray about whom he showed most enthusiasm.

  Though Leigh Hunt’s character was simple and his gifts distinct, he is not easy to class either as an author or a man. His literary pretensions were well summed up by Charles Lamb in the couplet:—

	“Wit, poet, proseman, partyman, translator,
	Hunt, thy best title yet is ‘Indicator.’”

With a nature filled with poetry, but yet most faulty as a poet; learned beyond the average, but hardly a scholar; full of sweet thoughts, but no thinker; vivacious and sportive to an extraordinary degree, yet falling short of supreme qualities as a humourist, Leigh Hunt scarcely attained to the first rank of writers, except as a sentimentalist, an anthologist, and a gossip, yet he so nearly touched it at so many points, and there is such a special quality in almost everything he wrote, that one hesitates to set him in a duller circle.

  Hunt, a man of amiable disposition, good and pure, a Bayard sans peur and sans reproche, had his conduct little affected by “free” thinking. At worst it left him with a childish carelessness of pecuniary obligations, and also to a considerable disregard of misconstruction. He went on his quiet, pleasurable way, never outraging Mrs. Grundy in his private life, not unconcerned at world-wrongs, speaking honestly but with kindness of all men, and fairly earning his reputation as “the gentlest of the wise.” But his family, perhaps spoiled by his easiness, inherited that easiness rather than the chivalrousness, which had kept him free from blame. He had eight children, sons and daughters. Of his daughters, Florimel, the eldest, Mrs. Gliddon, was a handsome woman; Julia, the second daughter, a petite and pretty coquette; Jacintha, whom her father used to call “monkey-face,” was the good wife of one of my pupils who, forsaking engraving, got his living by literature. Of two of the sons, Percy and Henry, government clerks, I knew but little, nor cared to know more…. John Hunt, the eldest son, though a man not without brains, may have had some mental weakness to excuse his conduct. After breakfasting with a friend, he would borrow a book and pledge it at the nearest pawnbroker’s; he would try to borrow money in his father’s name from his father’s friends, on one awkward occasion the father being in the house at which he called; such like tricks were not infrequent. Vincent, the youngest, was a very lovable fellow…. A weak repeat of his father, gentle but without moral fibre, he died almost before reaching manhood. Thornton, the second son, I knew best, a man rather below average height, deserving rather than his sister the name of “monkey-face,” but bright, clever, and very winning, a man in spite of his physiognomy who had his way with women; far too much so, it was notorious, with the pretty wife of his friend George Henry Lewes, the two men only quarreling over the expense of the double family.

  She [Mrs. Duncan Stewart] saw much of Leigh Hunt, of whom she was wont to say that she believed him to be the only person who, if he saw something yellow in the distance, and was told it was a buttercup, would be disappointed if he found it was only a guinea.

  I remember a visit from another hero of those times. We were walking across Kensington Square early one morning, when we heard some one hurrying after us and calling, “Thackeray, Thackeray!” This was also one of Byron’s friends—a bright-eyed, active old man, with long, wavy white hair, and a picturesque cloak flung over one shoulder. I can see him still, as he crossed the corner of the Square and followed us with a light, rapid step. My father, stopping short, turned back to meet him, greeting him kindly, and bringing him home with us to the old brown house at the corner where we were then living. There was a sort of eagerness and vividness of manner about the stranger which was very impressive. You could not help watching him and his cloak, which kept slipping from its place, and which he caught at again and again. We wondered at his romantic, foreign looks, and his gayety and bright, eager way. Afterwards we were told that this was Leigh Hunt. We knew his name very well, for on the drawing-room table, in company with various Ruskins and Punches, lay a pretty, shining book called “A Jar of Honey from Mount Hybla,” from which, in that dilettante, childish fashion which is half play, half impatience, and search for something else, we had contrived to extract our own allowance of honey.

  Mr. Hunt was striking in appearance—tall, dark, grizzled, bright-eyed, and rather fantastically dressed in a sacerdotal-looking garment. He received us with cordiality tinged with ceremony…. Mr. Hunt was most amiable: he discoursed about poetry as exhilaratingly as Ruskin does about art. He spoke of his own writings, and quite unaffectedly. It appeared to give him pleasure to do so. Perhaps if he talked less about them it would have been because he thought the more. He seemed proud of his old age, speaking with a smile of his soixante et mille ans. He gave me the impression of being rich in the milk of amiability and optimism. I do not think this was feigned, for I often heard of him as a benevolently minded man. I could hardly realise that this was the Mr. Hunt who had written that underbred book about “Byron and his Contemporaries.” I suppose age and experience had mellowed him.

  There was another respect in which the accomplished essayist suffered injustice. I refer to the report which spread abroad after the appearance of Dickens’s “Bleak House,” that the creation of Harold Skimpole was borrowed from Hunt. The prevalence of this impression naturally afforded much pain to the individual most concerned, and his feelings were communicated to the author, who came down to Hammersmith in order to tender Hunt his solemn assurance that he had not designed anything of the kind, and that he would do anything in his power to make reparation for the unintentional wrong. Hunt told my informant that Dickens was affected almost to tears; but I never heard of any public or direct disavowal.

  Leigh Hunt was of tall stature, with sallow, not to say yellow complexion. His mouth lacked refinement and firmness, but he had large, expressive eyes. His manner, however, had such fascination that, after he had spoken for five minutes, one forgot how he looked. He wrote the most charming letters, perfectly alike in both form and spirit. I particularly enjoyed the simple, old-fashioned suppers to which he frequently invited me. His daughter played and sang for us, and Leigh Hunt told us the most delightful stories of his Italian travels, and of Shelley and Byron (whom he always called “Birron”). I lived on the north side of the park, and I remember I used to get over the palings to cross Kensington Gardens, and thus shorten the distance home; the palings of those days were easily negotiated by an active young man.

The Story of Rimini, 1816

	Who loves to peer up at the morning sun,
	With half-shut eyes and comfortable cheek,
	Let him, with his sweet tale, full often seek
	For meadows where the little rivers run;
	Who loves to linger with that brightest one
	Of Heaven—Hesperus—let him lowly speak
	These numbers to the night, and starlight meek,
	Or moon, if that her hunting be begun.
	He who knows these delights, and too is prone
	To moralize upon a smile or tear,
	Will find at once a region of his own,
	A bower for his spirit, and will steer
	To alleys where the fir-tree drops its cone,
	Where robins hop, and fallen leaves are sear.

  This poem should be read twice to form a just opinion of its merits; the unusual, and in many places, the awkward versification will be apt to disgust the reader; we found more pleasure in the second perusal than the first. It contains some exquisite expressions of sentiment, and many passages that show an accurate and nice observation of the most delicate emotions of the human heart; the author also discovers a fine perception of harmony, in choosing the seasons and the picturesque circumstances of landscape, to accompany the joyous and painful feelings of the human breast. Many persons have judged that Lord Byron must possess a bad heart, because he delights in painting the bad and violent passions almost exclusively. By the same rule, Mr. Hunt should be presumed to have a most amiable character, since he so frequently describes frankness, openness, cheerfulness, &c. He does this almost to satiety; and there is a repetition of such description that becomes insipid.

  We will venture to oppose his Third Canto of the “Story of Rimini” for classic elegance and natural feeling to any equal number of lines from Mr. Southey’s Epics or from Mr. Moore’s Lalla Rookh.

  Is full of delicate and refined fancy; but the diction is often deformed by a peculiar and intolerable coxcombry of language, to which has been given the significant appellation of cockneyism. It is a mixture of the concetti of second-rate Italian poetry with the smug arcadianism of a London citizen masquerading as a shepherd.

  Except Chaucer himself, no painter of processions has excelled the entrance of Paulo to Ravenna, in the Story of Rimini.

  His “Story of Rimini,” published in 1816, being, as it was, indisputably the finest inspiration of Italian song that had yet been heard in our modern English literature, had given him a place of his own as distinct as that of any other poetical writer of the day. Whatever may be thought of some peculiarities in his manner of writing, nobody will now be found to dispute either the originality of his genius, or his claim to the title of a true poet.

  The poem has many pleasing, and some very sweet lines, but by endeavouring to be singular, or to exhibit somewhat of a novelty in his verse, he has introduced expressions and phrases that do not fall harmoniously upon the English ear. I mean they want that natural flow and those verbal combinations which are most pleasing. Some one, I remember, attacked his use of the word “swirl,”—

“—Swirl into the bay.”

If this were the only objection to the structure and language of a poem that contains many fine lines, with what may be called here and there a concetto, it would be indeed hypercritical to notice them. Whoever has seen a vessel with a gentle breeze and strong tide in her favour run into a bay and anchor, will feel how very descriptive of the actual fact the word he thus used.

  It is conceived in the spirit of Chaucer and has in it lines worthy of Dryden.

  Of his poems, the “Story of Rimini,” which we should rank among the highest, is full of charming poetical conceits…. But the whole composition lacks depth; it is charming upon the surface, but there is nothing to be found below.

  He never realised the proper dignity of poetry, and in discarding monotony, became slipshod. Hard polish was replaced by limp jerkiness, and the couplet in his hands grew pert and garrulous. There are beautiful passages in the poem worthy of the great reform to be inaugurated, but they are few and far between. In the matter of language, again, he could not maintain a high standard. His very simplicity was in part artificial, and he had a singular taste for giving ordinary words an original significance which ruined his phrases, though it never made him obscure. The poem was considerably revised, but the changes related principally to the final development of the plot and are not all improvements. In old age Leigh Hunt referred to “Rimini” as the work of a “Tyro,” but it does not contain any signs of youth from which he was afterwards exempt, and reaches as high a level as any of his longer pieces. It proves conclusively that he was not, in the highest sense, a poet.

  Executed with ever so much of delicacy—but not a sign or a symbol of the grave and melancholy tone which should equip, even to the utmost hem of its descriptive passages, that tragic story of Dante.

Autobiography, 1850–60

  Heaven bless the reader, and all of us: and enable us to compare notes some day in some Elysian corner of intuition, where we shall be in no need of prefaces and explanations, and only wonder how any of us could have missed the secret of universal knowledge and happiness.

  Well, I call this an excellent good book, by far the best of the autobiographic kind I remember to have read in the English language; and, indeed, except it be Boswell’s of Johnson, I do not know where we have such a picture drawn of human life as in these three volumes.

  His “Autobiography” is brimming with expressions of good will to all mankind, and frank confession of youthful offences. His philanthropic sentiment was overflowing. Uncle Toby was his ideal—“divine Uncle Toby.” “He who created Uncle Toby was the wisest man since the days of Shakespeare.” “As long as the character of Toby Shandy finds an echo in the heart of man, the heart of man is noble.” In point of style, his model was Addison. In simplicity and felicitous grace of expression he may be contrasted with the more robust and careless vigour predominant in the early days of the Edinburgh Review and Blackwood. He particularly excels in the graceful touches of humorous caricature.

  One of the most interesting books ever written is Leigh Hunt’s biography of himself,—an autobiography almost unequaled. It is a book that ought to be read by all who wish to get authentic information of Hunt’s contemporaries. It abounds in pen portraits of many writers who have long ago passed into fame.

  The book is one of the most graceful and genial chronicles of its kind in our language.

  It is a fascinatingly interesting work, containing vivid pictures of the literary society of his time, characteristic vignettes of his most illustrious contemporaries, besides revealing, by what it omits rather than by what it says, the singularly fine temper, delicate sense of humour, generous bearing, and ultra-conscientiousness of its author.

  A work which no one can read without loving, or at least liking, the author. He was a master of the art of portrait-painting, clear, humorous and sympathetic.

Poems

  His self-delusions are very lamentable—they have enticed him into a Situation which I should be less eager after than that of a galley Slave…. There is no greater Sin after the seven deadly than to flatter oneself into an idea of being a great Poet.

  One of Hunt’s most apparent characteristics is his cheerfulness. His temperament is obviously mercurial. His fondness for the gayer class of Italian writers indicates a sympathy with southern buoyancy not often encountered in English poetry. His versification is easy and playful; too much so, indeed, for imposing effect. He seems to have written generally under the inspiration of high animal spirits. His sentiment is lively and tender, rather than serious and impressive. The reviewers have censured him with rather too much severity for occasional affectations. With a few exceptions on this score his “Story of Rimini” is a charming poem. “The Legend of Florence,” written at a later period, is one of the most original and captivating of modern plays. Many of his “Epistles” glow with a genial humour and spirit of fellowship which betray fine social qualities. He lives obviously in his affections, and cultivates literature with refined taste rather than with lukewarm assiduity.

  No living poet has that obvious and overflowing delight in the bare act of composition, of which this poet gives sign. “Composition” is not a word for him—we might as well use it of a bird—such is the ease with which it seems to flow! Yet he is an artist and constructor also, and is known to work very hard at times before it comes out so bright, and graceful, and pretending to have cost no pains at all. He spins golden lines round and round, as a silk-worm in its cocoon…. His sympathies with men are wide as the distance between joy and grief: and while his laughter is audible and resistless, in pathos and depth of tender passionateness, he is no less sufficient. The tragic power of the “Story of Rimini,” has scarcely been exceeded by any English poet, alive or dead; and his “Legend of Florence,” is full of the “purification of pity,” and the power of the most Christian-like manhood and sympathy.

  At the outset of his career, his ambition was to excel as a bard. His principal success, however, seems chiefly to lay in a certain vein of essay-writing, in which fancy and familiarity are delightfully combined. Still he has woven many rhymes that are not only sweet and cheerful, but possess a peculiar grace and merit of their own, besides illustrating some capital ideas relating to poetical diction and influence. They are, to be sure, deformed by some offences against the dignity of the muse, in the shape of affectations and far-fetched conceits.

  It is in vain here to attempt to speak of the poetic merits of Leigh Hunt. A host of fine compositions comes crowding on our consciousness. “The Legend of Florence,” a noble tragedy; “The Palfrey;” “Hero and Leander;” “The Feast of the Poets;” and “The Violets;” numbers of delightful translations from the Italian, a literature in which Leigh Hunt has always reveled; and above all, “Captain Sword and Captain Pen.” We would recommend every body, just now that the war spirit is rising among us, to read that poem, and learn what horrors they are rejoicing over, and what the Christian spirit of this age demands of us. But we must praise the lyrics of this volume:—the pathos of the verses “To T. L. H., six years old, during a sickness,” and the playful humor of those “To J. H., four years old,” call on us for notice; and then the fine blank verse poems, “Our Cottage,” and “Reflections of a Dead Body,” are equally importunate. If any one does not know what Leigh Hunt has done for the people and the age, let him get the pocket edition of his poems, and he will soon find himself growing in love with life, with his fellow-men and himself.

  With acute powers of conception, a sparkling and lively fancy, and a quaintly curious felicity of diction, the grand characteristic of Leigh Hunt’s poetry is word-painting; and in this he is probably without a rival, save in the last and best productions of Keats, who contended, not vainly, with his master on that ground. In this respect, nothing can be more remarkable than some passages in “Rimini,” and in his collection entitled “Foliage,”—much of which he has since capriciously cancelled; and he also exercised this peculiar faculty most felicitously in translations from the French and Italian, although, in some instances, he carried it to the amount of grotesqueness or affectation. His heroic couplet has much of the life, strength, and flexibility of Dryden—of whom he often reminds us; and in it he follows glorious John, even to his love for triplets and Alexandrines.

  Of his poems, besides “The Story of Rimini,” his “Palfrey” is a fine, merrily tripping tale most pleasantly told; his “Captain Sword and Captain Pen” is full of power and pathos; of vivid description and terrible scene-painting; of noble sentiment and glorious aspirations; his drama, “A Legend of Florence,” was successful on the stage, and is successful in the closet. A better companion for a summer day’s ramble than the pocket edition of Leigh Hunt’s poems we cannot conceive.

  He was an inveterate hoper, his face ever toward the sunrise…. Few poets have managed to scatter so much sunshine as Leigh Hunt.

  Leigh Hunt’s distinction as a poet is to be inspired by pleasure which never steals from his senses the freshness of boyhood, and never darkens his heart with the shadow of unsatisfied desire…. His poetry was not the poetry of thought and passion—which we have in Shakespeare; nor—to use Leigh Hunt’s own words—that of “scholarship and rapt ambition,” which we have in Milton. He would have passed his whole life writing eternal new stories in verse, part grave, part gay, of no great length, but “just sufficient,” he says, “to vent the pleasure with which I am stung on meeting with some touching adventure, and which haunts me till I can speak of it somehow.”

  No one-sided sentiment of reaction against our so-called Augustan literature disqualified Leigh Hunt from becoming, as he afterwards became, the greatest master since the days of Dryden of that heroic couplet, which had become to most minds indissolubly associated with the prosaic versification of the eighteenth century school.

  Leigh Hunt, like Hazlitt, wrote largely in newspapers, in magazines, and reviews, and collected these writings into volumes which exist and are laid up on dusty shelves where nobody thinks of disturbing them. But Leigh Hunt did what Hazlitt could not do. There came out of his heart at last two exquisite little poems, which, to apply our favourite test, would, if all he ever wrote was swept away by some conflagration, linger in individual memories for generations, and flutter down orally through the mist of years, indestructible and sacred. One of these scraps of verse is the exquisite little fable called “Abou Ben Adhem”: the other, Lines addressed “To T. L. H., six years old, during a sickness.”

  We have need to search long and in many places before finding anything more profoundly expressive of the wonder and awe of the soul of man brought face to face with the mystery of time than Hunt’s “Thought on the Nile.” As a whole, however, Hunt as a poet may be said to be the apostle of those who perceive nothing poetic that is not petty. There is the reverse of largeness in nearly everything from his pen. There is an affectation of the bird-like in the very movement of his verse. Hunt chirps of hawthorn and lilacs.

  Poetry was his first, his last, his most constant love; and if by prose he had to win the meat and the raiment of life it was poetry that to him was life itself. In one respect—and sufficient note has hardly been taken of it—Hunt’s place is a singularly high one, for he is among the originators.

  Turning to the consideration of his poetry, we can see the same obvious faults in it as in his prose. It is often trivial in subject, always slight in treatment, and pet ideas are sometimes allowed to run to seed. He was too much inclined to use words in unusual connections and with a meaning of his own, though without producing obscurity. It may also perhaps be criticised with less compunction than his prose, because it was his chosen work, written in times of comparative leisure, and by which he hoped to live.

  He wrote no great poems, to be sure; for here, as in his prose, he is earnestly bent on carving little baskets out of cherry-stones—little figures on cherry-stones—dainty hieroglyphics, but always on cherry-stones!

  In my boyhood his poetry had given me much enjoyment, and increased that which I had derived from other poetry. The Greeks had, as he felicitously remarked, “invented the poetry of gladness,” and by that portion of it his own had been suggested in part. He had a vivid appreciation of nature as seen from the classical point of view, and his sonnets possess a singular sense of proportion, the finest of them being one entitled “A Thought on the Nile,” written, I think, in competition with two composed on the same day by Shelley and Keats.

  “The Story of Rimini,” his longest poem, still delights in its best pages, full as they are of reminders not only of older poets like Spenser, but of Keats, whom Hunt so strongly influenced; and such lines as those to “Jenny,” or upon “Abou Ben Adhem,” are simply unforgetable.

  Hunt was the first who seriously set himself to tell a tale in Chaucer’s manner, to imitate his sprightly familiarity, his genial unconstraint. He only succeeded in showing how rare and difficult a thing that Chaucerian grace of manner is. He is unconstrained enough, but his unconstraint, though not without moments of charm, is apt to recall the slovenly ease of an underbred man. He is at his best in describing scenery; for the human drama and its tragic climax he lacks sinew; the concentrated pathos of Dante dissolves away in his hands into a tender romantic dream. Nor did Hunt attempt to reproduce the dramatic element in the telling, which was Chaucer’s final and most brilliant contribution to the Tale.

General

	He of the rose, the violet, the spring,
	The social smile, the chain for Freedom’s sake:
	And lo!—whose steadfastness would never take
	A meaner sound than Raphael’s whispering.

  I was employed looking over law papers all the forenoon; I then walked in the rain to Clapton, reading by the way the “Indicator.” There is a spirit of enjoyment in this little work which gives a charm to it. Leigh Hunt seems the very opposite of Hazlitt. He loves everything, and, excepting that he has a few polemical antipathies, finds everything beautiful.

  A more amiable man in society I know not; nor (when he will allow his senses to prevail over his sectarian principles) a better writer.

  To my taste, the Author of “Rimini” and Editor of the Examiner is among the best and least-corrupted of our poetical prose-writers. In his light but well-supported columns we find the raciness, the sharpness, and the sparkling effect of poetry, with little that is extravagant or far-fetched, and no turgidity or pompous pretension. Perhaps there is too much the appearance of relaxation and trifling (as if he had escaped the shackles of rhyme), a caprice, a levity, and a disposition to innovate in words and ideas. Still the genuine master-spirit of the prose-writer is there; the one of lively, sensible conversation; and this may in part arise from the author’s being himself an animated talker. Mr. Hunt wants something of the heat and earnestness of the political partisan; but his familiar and miscellaneous papers have all the ease, grace, and point of the best style of Essay-writing. Many of his effusions in the Indicator show, that if he had devoted himself exclusively to that mode of writing, he inherits more of the spirit of Steele than any man since his time.

  The most vicious of all styles, the style of Mr. Leigh Hunt and his miserable followers.

  Have you seen that wondrous Life of Byron? Was it not a thousand pities Hunt had borrowed money of the man he was to disinhume and behead in the course of duty afterwards? But for love or money I cannot see Hunt’s book, or anything but extracts of it, and so must hold my tongue. Poor Hunt! He has a strain of music in him too, but poverty and vanity have smote too rudely over the strings.

  His prose is gossiping, graceful, and searching, and charms many readers.

  We have a kindness for Mr. Leigh Hunt. We form our judgment of him, indeed, only from events of universal notoriety—from his own works, and from the works of other writers, who have generally abused him in the most rancorous manner. But, unless we are greatly mistaken, he is a very clever, a very honest, and a very good-natured man. We can clearly discern, together with many merits, many serious faults, both in his writings and in his conduct. But we really think that there is hardly a man living whose merits have been so grudgingly allowed, and whose faults have been so cruelly expiated…. In some respects Mr. Leigh Hunt is excellently qualified for the task which he has undertaken. His style, in spite of its mannerism, nay, partly by reason of his mannerism, is well suited for light, garrulous, desultory ana, half critical, half biographical. We do not always agree with his literary judgments; but we find in him what is very rare in our time, the power of justly appreciating and heartily enjoying good things of very different kinds. He can adore Shakespeare and Spenser without denying poetical genius to the author of “Alexander’s Feast,” or fine observation, rich fancy, and exquisite humour to him who imagined Will Honeycomb and Sir Roger de Coverley. He has paid particular attention to the history of the English drama from the Age of Elizabeth down to our own time, and has every right to be heard with respect on that subject.

  Do you know Leigh Hunt’s exquisite essays called “The Indicator and Companion,” &c., published by Moxon? I hold them at once in delight and reverence.

  In religious feeling, however, he has been misrepresented. It is certain that no man was ever more capable of the spirit of reverence; for God gifted him with a loving genius—with a genius to love and bless. He looks full tenderly into the face of every man, and woman, and child, and living creature; and the beautiful exterior world, even when it is in an angry mood, he smooths down softly, as in recognition of his sentiency, with a gentle caressing of the fancy—Chaucer’s irrepressible “Ah, benedicite,” falling forever from his lips!

  One of the pleasantest writers of his time,—easy, colloquial, genial, humane, full of fine fancies and verbal niceties, possessing a loving if not a “learned spirit,” with hardly a spice of bitterness in his composition. He is an excellent commentator on the minute beauties of poetry. He has little grasp or acuteness of understanding, and his opinions are valueless where those qualities should be called into play; but he has a natural taste, which detects with nice accuracy what is beautiful, and a power of jaunty expression, which conveys its intuitive decisions directly to other minds.

  I took up Leigh Hunt’s book “The Town” with the impression that it would be interesting only to Londoners, and I was surprised, ere I had read many pages, to find myself enchained by his pleasant, graceful, easy style, varied knowledge, just views, and kindly spirit. There is something peculiarly anti-melancholic in Leigh Hunt’s writings, and yet they are never boisterous. They resemble sunshine, being at once bright and tranquil.

  With every wish to maintain an esteem for Mr. Hunt as a writer—an esteem that dates from my earliest boyhood—I must protest against his painstaking use of my dramatic success—such as it has been—as an illustration of the injustice set down to Mr. Hunt’s old brotherhood of journalists; namely, that they would make “a dead set” against any manager who should refuse to risk his treasury on their stage experiments! An odd compliment this, at parting, from the first editor of the Examiner to the journalists of 1850. It is a pity in the summing up of his literary life—a life that has been valuable to letters and to liberty—that Mr. Hunt should have sought the cause of his own stage disappointments in the fancied stage tyranny and meanness of others. Pity, that his ink, so very sweet in every other page of his “Autobiography,” should suddenly curdle in the page dramatic.

  His name is associated in our minds with all manner of kindness, love, beauty, and gentleness. He has given us a fresh insight into nature, made the flowers seem gayer, the earth greener, the skies more bright, and all things more full of happiness and blessing. By the magical touch of his pen, he “kissed dead things into life.” Age, which dries up the geniality of so many, brought no change to him. To the last he was spoken of as the “gray-haired boy,”—“the old-young poet, with gray hairs on his head, but youth in his eyes,”—and the perusal of his “Autobiography,” written in his old age, serves to bring out charmingly the prominent features of his life.

  I have been so strangely taken lately with Leigh Hunt’s letters. I used to love his writings when I was quite young, and I believe I like best, what he liked best; a green lane to walk in, or a pleasant window looking out upon a sunny, sloping field with trees. L. H., I think, must have loved an old-fashioned garden, with high walls and broad gravel walks, with espaliers and gooseberries, currants and vegetables, set within beds of flowers. He is the very soul and pith of pleasantness. Who but he could have spoken in spring of being “gay and vernal and daffodilean?” There is a poem in that last word. I wonder if, when I grow old, and comfortable, and chatty, I have it in me to be anything of a Christian Leigh Hunt; or would the Christian element resist and decompose the Leigh Huntian?—I think not.

  To pass from Hazlitt to Leigh Hunt is like passing from a rough landscape sketch by Salvator, in which, according to Coleridge, the rocks take vague likeness of the human figure, to a garden scene by Lancret, with a group seated round a fountain engaged in dining off peaches, and listening to a gentle shepherd who is playing a guitar or telling a pleasant story. Leigh Hunt is as constitutionally gay as Hazlitt is constitutionally saturnine.

  Few men have effected so much by mere exquisiteness of taste in the absence of high creative power; fewer still, so richly endowed with taste, have so frequently and conspicuously betrayed the want of it…. This observation principally refers to his poetry, which, in spite of such vexatious flaws, nevertheless possesses a brightness, animation, artistic symmetry, and metrical harmony which lift the author out of the rank of minor poets, particularly when the influence of his example upon his contemporaries is taken into account. He excelled especially in narrative poetry…. As an appreciative critic, whether literary or dramatic, he is hardly equalled; his guidance is as safe as it is genial. The no less important vocation of a censor was uncongenial to his gentle nature, and was rarely essayed by him.

  Of all authors indeed, and probably of all readers, Leigh Hunt had the keenest eye for merit and the warmest appreciation of it wherever found. He was actively engaged in politics, yet was never blind to the genius of an adversary; blameless himself in morals, he could admire the wit of Wycherley; and a freethinker in religion, he could see both wisdom and beauty in the divines. Moreover, it is immensely to his credit that this universal knowledge, instead of puffing him up, only moved him to impart it, and that next to the pleasure he took in books was that he derived from teaching others to take pleasure in them. Witness his “Wit and Humour” and his “Imagination and Fancy,” to my mind the greatest treasures in the way of handbooks that have ever been offered to students of English literature, and the completest antidotes to pretence in it.

  As pure-minded a man as ever lived, and a critic whose subtlety of discrimination and whose soundness of judgment, supported as it was on a broad base of truly liberal scholarship, have hardly yet won fitting appreciation.

  Hunt’s literary position in London exposed him to many assaults of criticism, his natural infirmities as a writer exposed him to many more. Perhaps there are few, if any, faults of which Hunt as a critic was not guilty.

  The faculty of over-refining which he deprecated in Coleridge was his own failing. He did not temporize with wrong; yet the ever-abiding spirit of gentleness and charity which was with him seemed to break the force of his scorn. To use a choice and expressive Saxon phrase, Leigh Hunt was not pig-headed. He lacked the victorious brute energy, the “insolence of health,” as Hazlitt called it, which admits of no hesitancy, and clears its way straight to its end. His nature was too representative. Every possible bearing which a question might take appealed to him and deterred him. He had, as his son pointed out, a Hamlet-like deliberation, in which are yet elements of the finest wisdom and courage.

  His affections fertilized and blessed the hearts of all his readers. His idolatries were only tendered to what is pure and noble in art. You admire his enthusiasm because it is wisely bestowed. For instance, when he has once taught his reader to discriminate what is true in poetry, there never can be any further mistake in judgment. He is almost infallible as a guide to the student…. He was as personal an essayist as Montaigne, but never obtrusive nor offensive. He liked to be candid with his readers, and always treated them with open-heartedness and joyous cordiality.

  Of the many charms of Hunt’s writings, perhaps the most powerful is the personal accent which brings the writer near to us. It seems strange at first sight that we should feel this with regard to a man whose work was so largely critical, for the traditional view of criticism is that it is something essentially abstract and unhuman—not to say inhuman—but the very thing which makes Leigh Hunt a memorable worker in this field of literature is that in his hands criticism became vascular and alive, a thing of flesh and blood.

  What appears, now, in the retrospect, all but incomprehensible in this regard, is the circumstance that, at the outset of his career, Leigh Hunt was for several years together in the early part of this century assailed by more than one of the leading organs of public opinion with a scurrility that was often nothing less than ferocious and malignant. It arose clearly from the completest mis-apprehension, by his vilifiers, alike of his writings and of his character. His writings, both prose and verse, remain to this day intact—unaltered and unmodified. Nothing in them having been cancelled or withdrawn, they can speak for themselves. His character, again, such as it was then, continued, in all essentials, identically the same to the very end—ripened, it may be, with the mere lapse of years, but otherwise unchanged.

  If the collector of first editions requires an instance from which to justify the faith which is in him against those who cry out that bibliography is naught, Leigh Hunt is a good example to his hand. This active and often admirable writer, during a busy professional life, issued a long series of works in prose and verse which are of every variety of commonness and scarcity, but which have never been, and probably never will be, reprinted as a whole. 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.

  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 every-day 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. Cheap and simple enjoyments, true taste leading to true economy, the companionship of books and the pleasures of friendly intercourse, were the constant themes of his pen. He knew much suffering, physical and mental, and experienced many cares and sorrows; but his cheerful courage, imperturbable sweetness of temper, and unfailing love and power of forgiveness never deserted him.

  Charming as his “Story of Rimini” is, long as it will maintain for him a place among the poets of his time, notable as its influence has been on the use of the heroic couplet, it is as a critic that Hunt takes his highest place in the literature of the century. In truth, he was well equipped for the critic’s office. He had a keen eye, an open mind, an even judgment, a warm but intrepid heart, and a light, incisive utterance. There were few of his illustrious contemporaries who were not indebted to him for vindication or exposition.

  A sort of poetic Baedeker [“Imagination and Fancy”] or Tourist’s Guide to Parnassus.

  He marked a moment in literature, the transition from the aristocracy to the democracy of letters. He was only a mortal, though he lived with the Immortals; but he has his place near them, and does not deserve to be altogether lost in the crowd. He was a vagabond of literature, a hack of genius. He wrote about everything: politics, economics, Shakespeare, Byron, Italy, scenery, art, the Quattro Poeti, the modern writers, actors, and singers, the drama, the stage. He wrote so rapidly and indiscriminately, turning out his articles as the baker turns out his rolls, that the commonplace of the printer’s boy, waiting below for copy, might have been invented for him. Writing was as easy to him as talking—and how he talked, Carlyle and Hazlitt have told us.

  His strength lies, as he himself suspected, in the brief narrative poems of which “Abou Ben Adhem” is the highest example. Here the impulse is from without, the lines are prompted by the enjoyment of a “tale that is told,” and by the desire to express and impart that pleasure. The critical powers guide the creative, and lend them a vigour not their own. His manner at such times is simple and lucid, playful or tender according to circumstances, but always sincere and glowing. His ear, so keen for judgment, directs the rhythm, and makes the verse flowing and easy. His many admirable translations are composed in the same spirit. A loyal enthusiasm for the original prompts him to a rare fidelity in language and style, often achieved with marked success. Could Hunt have maintained these qualities of taste and self-control for any considerable period, he might have taken high rank as a poet…. He lacks passion, dignity, and restraint, his imagination is almost entirely fanciful; but by the winning charm of his own fresh and cultured personality he attracts and even occasionally subdues.

  When Leigh Hunt commenced to write essays, he was plainly under the spell of a past age, and the Connoisseur was admittedly his model. Nor did he ever wholly succeed in throwing off the faded garments of the eighteenth century, and there is always present in his style a touch of archaism which makes one rank him with the earlier essayists rather than with his own vigorous contemporaries. In 1812 he was known only as an unusually capable dramatic critic, and it was not till seven years later that he began in the “Indicator” to revive the essay on the lines of Addison and Goldsmith. He cannot, however, be placed in the first rank of English essayists. In all his work there is a lack of virility, and he had no special endowment of pathos or of humour. When it is said that he could write commonplace gracefully, his merits and defects are summarized. His essays bear nowhere the impress of a strong personality, they contain no fresh creations, and they scarcely ever deviate from one level of unemotional calm. Yet he had indubitable skill in writing on familiar subjects, and he wielded a simple style that on rare occasions became even eloquent.

  The great mass of his work, though it has qualities which raise it far above ordinary journalism, still has some of the defects of journalism upon it…. His criticism is the reverse of methodical; it rarely attempts to grasp and never succeeds in grasping the whole of the subject; it is the last criticism to go to if what one wants is the latitude and longitude of the writer or the book in the great chart of literature. It may almost be said of Hunt’s criticism of poetry in the late Laureate’s words that “it cannot understand, it loves;” and by virtue of love it frequently detects and reveals peculiarities of the subject which more strictly intelligent treatment has missed. For this irregular, desultory “impressionist” criticism, as well as for his topographical narratives and descriptions, his sketches of manners, his stories and anecdotes, his eighteenth-century essay-writing adjusted to a looser nineteenth-century standard—Leigh Hunt’s style is excellently suited. Save now and then when his poetic fit comes on while he is wielding the pen of prose, it cannot be said to be a very dignified or distinguished style; it is even, as has been hinted, sometimes slipshod and out-at-elbows, suggestive of the peculiar and rather slovenly ease and bonhomie which characterised its author’s whole life and conversation. But at its best it can be almost beautiful; and except when it is at its very worst (which is very seldom) it is always agreeable.

  An essayist, poet, and translator, full (at his best) of grace and charm in a kind quite of his own, he lacked both the stamina and the piercing imaginative vision which make Hazlitt so great. In temperament he was more akin to Lamb, but he equally lacked Lamb’s rarer qualities both as a man and as a writer; and his chief function in literature was to further the ease, vivacity and grace of which, though in a far choicer kind, Lamb was a master in prose, and Chaucer and Ariosto in verse.

  He was never strong enough to make his bitterness respected. Honeyed words became him better…. We follow such a writer with no sense of his having addressed our intellectual nature, but rather with a sense of pleasurable regalement to our nostrils by some high wordy perfume.

  Leigh Hunt had a certain bright chivalry on behalf of whatever assumed to itself the cherished name or the aspect of Liberty; at times he could present a gallant front to her foes. But Hunt’s shafts, if occasionally keen, were always light-timbered, and rather annoyed the enemy than achieved their ruin.

  As evil-tongued a critic as could be found.

  When we turn to his books, we find in his “Autobiography” perhaps the most complete and individual expression of the man: his charming fancy, his high spirits, wit, gayety, and abiding good-nature. But the same lightness and ease of style, the same kindliness and shrewdness of thought and observation, are to be found in his essays, so often written currente calamo for some one of his weekly periodicals. Such are the papers on the “Deaths of Little Children,” “The Old Lady,” “The Maid-Servant,” and “Coaches.” His contributions, whether as a poet or as a critic and appreciator of poetry, are, it is said, not read as much as they were ten, twenty years ago; but they make alone a remarkable contribution to nineteenth-century literature.

  Some of his shorter narrative poems, like “Abou Ben Adhem” and “Solomon’s Ring,” have achieved a transcient immortality, if the phrase may be allowed. He is interesting as a link between the literary group of the early part of the century and that of the second quarter, since he was intimate with Carlyle.