Henry Leigh, after whom Leigh Hunt was called. The boy was educated at Christ’s Hospital, of which school he has left a lively account in his autobiography. As a boy at school he was an ardent admirer of Gray and Collins, writing many verses in imitation of them. An impediment in his speech, afterwards removed, prevented his being sent to the university. “For some time after I left school,” he says, “I did nothing but visit my school-fellows, haunt the book-stalls and write verses.” These latter were published in 1801 under the title of Juvenilia, and contributed to introduce him into literary and theatrical society. He began to write for the newspapers, and published in 1807 a volume of theatrical criticisms, and a series of Classic Tales with critical essays on the authors.
In 1808 he quitted the War Office, where he had for some time been a clerk, to become editor of the Examiner newspaper, a speculation of his brother John. The new journal with which Leigh Hunt was connected for thirteen years soon acquired a high reputation. It was perhaps the only newspaper of the time which owed no allegiance to any political party, but assailed whatever seemed amiss, “from a principle of taste,” as Keats happily expressed it. The taste of the attack itself, indeed, was not always unexceptionable; and one upon the Prince Regent, the chief sting of which lay in its substantial truth, occasioned (1813) a prosecution and a sentence of two years’ imprisonment for each of the brothers. The effect was to give a political direction to what should have been the career of a man of letters. But the cheerfulness and gaiety with which Leigh Hunt bore his imprisonment attracted general attention and sympathy, and brought him visits from Byron, Moore, Brougham and others, whose acquaintance exerted much influence on his future destiny.
In 1810–1811 he edited for his brother John a quarterly magazine, the Reflector, for which he wrote “The Feast of the Poets,” a satire which gave offence to many contemporary poets, and particularly offended William Gifford of the Quarterly. The essays afterwards published under the title of the Round Table (2 vols., 1816–1817), conjointly with William Hazlitt, appeared in the Examiner. In 1816 he made a permanent mark in English literature by the publication of his Story of Rimini. There is perhaps no other instance of a poem short of the highest excellence having produced so important and durable an effect in modifying the accepted standards of literary composition. The secret of Hunt’s success consists less in superiority of genius than of taste. His refined critical perception had detected the superiority of Chaucer’s versification, as adapted to the present state of the language by Dryden, over the sententious epigrammatic couplet of Pope which had superseded it. By a simple return to the old manner he effected for English poetry in the comparatively restricted domain of metrical art what Wordsworth had already effected in the domain of nature; his is an achievement of the same class, though not of the same calibre. His poem is also a triumph in the art of poetical narrative, abounds with verbal felicities, and is pervaded throughout by a free, cheerful and animated spirit, notwithstanding the tragic nature of the subject. It has been remarked that it does not contain one hackneyed or conventional rhyme. But the writer’s occasional flippancy and familiarity, not seldom degenerating into the ludicrous, made him a mark for ridicule and parody on the part of his opponents, whose animosity, however, was rather political than literary.
In 1818 appeared a collection of poems entitled Foliage, followed in 1819 by Hero and Leander, and Bacchus and Ariadne. In the same year he reprinted these two works with The Story of Rimini and The Descent of Liberty with the title of Poetical Works, and started the Indicator, in which some of his best work appeared. Both Keats and Shelley belonged to the circle gathered around him at Hampstead, which also included William Hazlitt, Charles Lamb, Bryan Procter, Benjamin Haydon, Cowden Clarke, C. W. Dilke, Walter Coulson,[1] John Hamilton Reynolds,[2] and in general almost all the rising young men of letters of liberal sympathies. He had now for some years been married to Marianne Kent, who seems to have been sincerely attached to him, but was not in every respect a desirable partner. His own affairs were by this time in the utmost confusion, and he was only saved from ruin by the romantic generosity of Shelley. In return he was lavish of sympathy to Shelley at the time of the latter’s domestic distresses, and defended him with spirit in the Examiner, although he does not appear to have at this date appreciated his genius with either the discernment or the warmth of his generous adversary, Professor Wilson. Keats he welcomed with enthusiasm, and introduced to Shelley. He also wrote a very generous appreciation of him in the Indicator, and, before leaving for Italy, Keats stayed with Hunt at Hampstead. Keats seems, however, to have subsequently felt that Hunt’s example as a poet had been in some respects detrimental to him. After Shelley’s departure for Italy (1818) Leigh Hunt’s affairs became still more embarrassed, and the prospects of political reform less and less satisfactory. His health and his wife’s failed, and he was obliged to discontinue his charming series of essays entitled the Indicator (1819–1821), having, he says, “almost died over the last numbers.” These circumstances induced him to listen to a proposal, which seems to have originated with Shelley, that he should proceed to Italy and join Shelley and Byron in the establishment of a quarterly magazine in which Liberal opinions should be advocated with more freedom than was possible at home. The project was injudicious from every point of view; it would have done little for Hunt or the Liberal cause at the best, and depended entirely upon the co-operation of Byron, the most capricious of allies, and the most parsimonious of paymasters. Byron’s principal motive for acceding to it appears to have been the expectation of acquiring influence over the Examiner, and he was exceedingly mortified on discovering when too late that Hunt had parted, or was considered to have parted, with his interest in the journal. Leigh Hunt left England for Italy in November 1821, but storm, sickness and misadventure retarded his arrival until the 1st of July 1822, a rate of progress which T. L. Peacock appropriately compares to the navigation of Ulysses.
The tragic death of Shelley, a few weeks later, destroyed every prospect of success for the Liberal. Hunt was now virtually a dependant upon Byron, whose least amiable qualities were called forth by the relation of patron to an unsympathetic dependant, burdened with a large and troublesome family. He was moreover incessantly wounded by the representations of his friends that he was losing caste by the connexion. The Liberal lived through four quarterly numbers, containing contributions no less memorable than Byron’s “Vision of Judgment” and Shelley’s translations from Faust; but in 1823 Byron sailed for Greece, leaving his coadjutor at Genoa to shift for himself. The Italian climate and manners, however, were entirely to Hunt’s taste, and he protracted his residence until 1825, producing in the interim Ultra-Crepidarius, a Satire on William Gifford (1823), and his matchless translation (1825) of Francesco Redi’s Bacco in Toscana. In 1825 an unfortunate litigation with his brother brought him back to England, and in 1828 he committed his greatest mistake by the publication of his Lord Byron and some of his Contemporaries. The work is of considerable value as a corrective of merely idealized estimates of Lord Byron. But such a corrective should not have come from one who had lain under obligations to Byron. British ideas of what was decent were shocked, and the author especially writhed under the withering satire of Moore. For many years ensuing the history of Hunt’s life is that of a painful struggle with poverty and sickness. He worked unremittingly, but one effort failed after another. Two journalistic ventures, the Tatler (1830–1832), a daily devoted to literary and dramatic criticism, and Leigh Hunt’s London Journal (1834–1835),
- ↑ Walter Coulson (1794?–1860), lawyer and journalist, was at one time amanuensis to Jeremy Bentham, and became in 1823 editor of the Globe.
- ↑ John Hamilton Reynolds (1796–1852), best known for his friendship and correspondence with Keats. His narrative verse founded on the tales of Boccaccio appeared in 1821 as The Garden of Florence and other Poems. He wrote some admirable sonnets, one of which is addressed to Keats.
