HUNT 383 direction to the career of a man of letters. The position was an essentially false one, and led to an entire mis understanding of Leigh Hunt s character and aptitudes alike on the part of his friends and his antagonists. For the time he was exceedingly popular; the cheerfulness and gaiety with which he bore his imprisonment, and his amus ing devices to mitigate its severity, 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 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adapted to the present state of our language by Dryclen, over the sententious epigram matic couplet of Pope which had superseded it.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. Other characteristic traits are less commendable, and 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. These faults were still more conspicuous in other pieces published by him about this date. Ere long, however, Keats s " Lamia " and Shelley s " Julian and Maddalo " manifested the deliverance which he had wrought for English narrative poetry. Both these illustrious men belonged to the circle gathered around him at liampstead, which also included Hazlitt, Lamb, Procter, Haydon, Cowden Clarke, Dilke, Coulson, Rey nolds, 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 re spect 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 aided to the uttermost, though Keats seems 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 pro spects of political reform less and less satisfactory. His health and his wife s failed, and he was obliged to discon tinue his charming series of essays entitled the Indicator, 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 estab lishment of a periodical work 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 parsi monious 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 exceed ingly 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 June 1822, a rate of progress which Peacock appropriately compares to the navigation of Ulysses. Hunt s arrival in Italy was almost immediately followed by the tragic death of Shelley, which destroyed every pro spect 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 unsym pathetic dependant, burdened with a large and trouble some family, and who was moreover incessantly wounded in the most sensitive part by the representations of his friends that he was losing caste by the connexion. The Liberal lived through four quarterly numbers, contain ing contributions no less memorable than Byron s " Vision of Judgment" and Shelley s translations from Faust; but it produced little effect on the whole, and in 1823 Byron sailed for Greece, leaving his coadjutor at Genoa to shift for himself. The Italian climate and manners, how ever, were entirely to Hunt s taste, and he protracted his residence until 1 825, producing in the interim his matchless translation of Redi s Bacco in Toscana, and the religious work subsequently published under the title of The Religion of the Heart. In 1825 an unfortunate litigation with his brother brought him back to England, and in 1827 he committed the greatest mistake of his life by the publi cation of his Lord Byron and 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 obliga tions to Byron, however trifling, or however they might seem to be cancelled by subsequent unkindness. Leigh Hunt should also have considered that the materials for his estimate of Byron were chiefly afforded by a residence under Byron s own roof. Apart from its obvious impropriety, the publication in itself is in general petty and carping. Hunt s attitude towards Byron is always that of the inferior; in proportion, therefore, as Byron is made to look small, Hunt appears still smaller. The book s reception was even more unfavourable than its deserts. British manliness and British cant were for once equally 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 periodical ventures, the Tatler and ike* London Journal, were discontinued for want of subscribers, although in the latter Leigh Hunt had able coadjutors, and it contained some of his best writing. His editorship of the Monthly Repository, in which he succeeded W. J. Fox, was also unsuccessful. The adventitious circumstances which had for a time made the fortune of the Examiner no longer existed, and Hunt s strong and weak points, his refinement and his affectations, were alike unsuited to the general body of readers. Sir Ralph Esher, a romance of Charles the Second s period, was more successful, and Captain Sivord and Captain Pen, a spirited contrast between the victories of peace and the victories of war, deserves to be ranked among his best poems. In 1840 his circumstances were improved by the successful representation of his Legend of Florence, a play of great merit, although it has not
maintained itself upon the stage. Lover s Amazements, a
