The chief original authorities are Ammianus Marcellinus, Priscus, Jordanes, Procopius, Sidonius Apollinaris and Menander Protector. See also Gibbon,Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; J. B. Bury,History of the Later Roman Empire(1889); H. H. Howorth,History of the Mongols(1876-1888); J. Hodgkin,Italy and her Invaders(1892); and articles in theRevue orientale pour les études Ouralaltaiques. For the Chinese sources see E. H. Parker,A Thousand Years of the Tartars(1905), and numerous articles by the same author in theAsiatic Quarterly; also articles by Chavannes, O. Franke, Stein and others in various learned periodicals. For the literature on the White Huns seeEphthalites.
The chief original authorities are Ammianus Marcellinus, Priscus, Jordanes, Procopius, Sidonius Apollinaris and Menander Protector. See also Gibbon,Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; J. B. Bury,History of the Later Roman Empire(1889); H. H. Howorth,History of the Mongols(1876-1888); J. Hodgkin,Italy and her Invaders(1892); and articles in theRevue orientale pour les études Ouralaltaiques. For the Chinese sources see E. H. Parker,A Thousand Years of the Tartars(1905), and numerous articles by the same author in theAsiatic Quarterly; also articles by Chavannes, O. Franke, Stein and others in various learned periodicals. For the literature on the White Huns seeEphthalites.
(C. El.)
HUNSDON, HENRY CAREY,1st Baron(c.1524-1596), English soldier and courtier, was a son of William Carey (d. 1529); his mother was Mary (d. 1543), a sister of Anne Boleyn, and he was consequently cousin to Queen Elizabeth. Member of parliament for Buckingham under Edward VI. and Mary, he was knighted in 1558, was created Baron Hunsdon in 1559, and in 1561 became a privy councillor and a knight of the Garter. In 1568 he became governor of Berwick and warden of the east Marches, and he was largely instrumental in quelling the rising in the north of England in 1569, gaining a decisive victory over Leonard Dacre near Carlisle in February 1570. Hunsdon received very little money to cover his expenses, but Elizabeth lavished honours upon him, although he did not always carry out her wishes. In 1583 he became lord chamberlain, but he did not relinquish his post at Berwick. Hunsdon was one of the commissioners appointed to try Mary queen of Scots; after Mary’s execution he went on a mission to James VI. of Scotland, and when the Spanish Armada was expected he commanded the queen’s bodyguard. He died in London, at Somerset House, on the 23rd of July 1596.
His eldest son,George(1547-1603), 2nd Baron Hunsdon, was a member of parliament, a diplomatist, a soldier and lord chamberlain. He was also captain-general of the Isle of Wight during the time of the Spanish Armada. He was succeeded by his brother John (d. 1617). In 1628 John’s son Henry, 4th Baron Hunsdon, was created earl of Dover. This title became extinct on the death of the 2nd earl, John, in 1677, and a like fate befell the barony of Hunsdon on the death of the 8th baron, William Ferdinand, in June 1765. Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Spencer of Althorp, and wife of the 2nd Lord Hunsdon, is celebrated as the patroness of her kinsman, the poet Spenser; and either this lady or her daughter Elizabeth was the author of theTragedie of Marian(1613).
The 1st lord’s youngest son,Robert Carey(c.1560-1639), was for a long time a member of the English parliament. He was frequently employed on the Scottish borders; he announced the death of Elizabeth to James VI. of Scotland; and he was created earl of Monmouth in 1626. He wrote some interestingMemoirs, first published in 1759. His son and successor, Henry (1596-1661), is known as a translator of various French and Italian books. The title of earl of Monmouth became extinct on his death in June 1661.
HUNSTANTON[commonly pronounced Hunston], a seaside resort in the north-western parliamentary division of Norfolk, England, on the east shore of the Wash, 112 m. N. by E. from London by the Great Eastern railway. Pop. of urban district of New Hunstanton (1901) 1893. The new watering-place is about 1 m. from the old village. It has a good beach, a golf course and a pier. The parish church of St Mary is a fine Decorated building, containing monuments of the L’Estrange family, whose mansion, Hunstanton Hall, is a picturesque Tudor building of brick in a well-wooded park. A convalescent home (1872) commemorates the recovery from illness of King Edward VII. when Prince of Wales. At Brancaster, 6 m. E., there is a Roman fort which formed part of the defences of theLitus Saxonicum(4th centuryA.D.)
HUNT, ALFRED WILLIAM(1830-1896), English painter, son of Andrew Hunt, a landscape painter, was born at Liverpool in 1830. He began to paint while at the Liverpool Collegiate School; but as the idea of adopting the artist’s profession was not favoured by his father, he went in 1848 to Corpus Christi College, Oxford. His career there was distinguished; he won the Newdigate Prize in 1851, and became a Fellow of Corpus in 1858. He did not, however, abandon his artistic practice, for, encouraged by Ruskin, he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1854, and thenceforward regularly contributed landscapes in oil and water-colour to the London and provincial exhibitions. In 1861 he married, gave up his Fellowship, and was elected an Associate of the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours, receiving full membership three years later. His work is distinguished mainly by its exquisite quality and a poetic rendering of atmosphere. Hunt died on 3rd May 1896. Mrs A. W. Hunt (néeMargaret Raine) wrote several works of fiction; and one of her daughters, Violet Hunt, is well known as a novelist.
See Frederick Wedmore, “Alfred Hunt,â€Magazine of Art(1891);Exhibition of Drawings in Water Colour by Alfred William Hunt, Burlington Fine Arts Club (1897).
See Frederick Wedmore, “Alfred Hunt,â€Magazine of Art(1891);Exhibition of Drawings in Water Colour by Alfred William Hunt, Burlington Fine Arts Club (1897).
HUNT, HENRY(1773-1835), English politician, commonly called “Orator Hunt,†was born at Widdington Farm, Upavon, Wiltshire, on the 6th of November 1773. While following the vocation of a farmer he made the acquaintance of John Horne Tooke, with whose advanced views he soon began to sympathize. At the general election of 1806 he came to the front in Wiltshire; he soon associated himself with William Cobbett, and in 1812 he was an unsuccessful candidate for Bristol. He was one of the speakers at the meeting held in Spa Fields, London, in November 1816; in 1818 he tried in vain to become member of parliament for Westminster, and in 1820 for Preston. In August 1819 Hunt presided over the great meeting in St Peter’s Field, Manchester, which developed into a riot and was called the “Peterloo massacre.†He was arrested and was tried for conspiracy, being sentenced to imprisonment for two years and a half. In August 1830 he was elected member of parliament for Preston, but he lost his seat in 1833. While in parliament Hunt presented a petition in favour of women’s rights, probably the first of this kind, and he moved for a repeal of the corn laws. He died on the 15th of February 1835. During his imprisonment Hunt wrote hisMemoirswhich were published in 1820.
See R. Huish,Life of Hunt(1836); and S. Bamford,Passages in the Life of a Radical(2nd ed., 1893).
See R. Huish,Life of Hunt(1836); and S. Bamford,Passages in the Life of a Radical(2nd ed., 1893).
HUNT, HENRY JACKSON(1819-1889), American soldier, was born in Detroit, Michigan, on the 14th of September 1819, and graduated at the U.S. military academy in 1839. He served in the Mexican War under Scott, and was breveted for gallantry at Contreras and Churubusco and at Chapultepec. He became captain in 1852 and major in 1861. His professional attainments were great, and in 1856 he was a member of a board entrusted with the revision of light artillery drill and tactics. He took part in the first battle of Bull Run in 1861, and soon afterwards became chief of artillery in the Washington defences. As a colonel on the staff of General M’Clellan he organized and trained the artillery reserve of the Army of the Potomac. Throughout the Civil War he contributed more than any officer to the effective employment of the artillery arm. With the artillery reserve he rendered the greatest assistance at the battle of Malvern Hill, and soon afterwards he became chief of artillery in the Army of the Potomac. On the day after the battle of South Mountain he was made brigadier-general of volunteers. At the Antietam, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, he rendered further good service, and at Gettysburg his handling of the artillery was conspicuous in the repulse of Pickett’s charge, and he was rewarded with the brevet of colonel. He served in Virginia to the end of the war, attaining the brevet ranks of major-general of volunteers and brigadier-general of regulars. When the U.S. army was reorganized in 1866 he became colonel of the 5th artillery and president of the permanent Artillery Board. He held various commands until 1883, when he retired to become governor of the Soldiers’ Home, Washington, D.C. He died on the 11th of February 1889. He was the author ofInstructions for Field Artillery(1860), and of papers on Gettysburg in the “Battles and Leaders†series.
His brother,Lewis Cass Hunt(1824-1886), served throughout the Civil War in the infantry arm, becoming brigadier-general of volunteers in 1862, and brevet brigadier-general U.S.A. in 1865.
HUNT, JAMES HENRY LEIGH(1784-1859), English essayist and miscellaneous writer, was born at Southgate, Middlesex, on the 19th of October 1784, His father, the son of a West Indian clergyman, had settled as a lawyer in Philadelphia, and his mother was the daughter of a merchant there. Having embraced the loyalist side, Leigh Hunt’s father was compelled to fly to England, where he took orders, and acquired some reputation as a popular preacher, but want of steadiness, want of orthodoxy, and want of interest conspired to prevent his obtaining any preferment. He was engaged by James Brydges, 3rd duke of Chandos, to act as tutor to his nephew, JamesHenry 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 ofJuvenilia, 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 ofClassic Taleswith 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 theExaminernewspaper, 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, theReflector, for which he wrote “The Feast of the Poets,†a satire which gave offence to many contemporary poets, and particularly offended William Gifford of theQuarterly. The essays afterwards published under the title of theRound Table(2 vols., 1816-1817), conjointly with William Hazlitt, appeared in theExaminer. In 1816 he made a permanent mark in English literature by the publication of hisStory 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 entitledFoliage, followed in 1819 byHero and Leander, andBacchus and Ariadne. In the same year he reprinted these two works withThe Story of RiminiandThe Descent of Libertywith the title ofPoetical Works, and started theIndicator, 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,1John Hamilton Reynolds,2and 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 theExaminer, 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 theIndicator, 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 theIndicator(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 theExaminer, 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 theLiberal. 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. TheLiberallived 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 interimUltra-Crepidarius, a Satire on William Gifford(1823), and his matchless translation (1825) of Francesco Redi’sBacco 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 hisLord 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, theTatler(1830-1832), a daily devoted to literary and dramatic criticism, andLeigh Hunt’s London Journal(1834-1835),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 (1837-1838) of theMonthly Repository, in which he succeeded W. J. Fox, was also unsuccessful. The adventitious circumstances which had for a time made the fortune of theExaminerno longer existed, and Hunt’s strong and weak points, his refinement and his affectations, were alike unsuited to the general body of readers.
In 1832 a collected edition of his poems was published by subscription, the list of subscribers including many of his opponents. In the same year was printed for private circulationChristianism, the work afterwards published (1853) asThe Religion of the Heart. A copy sent to Carlyle secured his friendship, and Hunt went to live next door to him in Cheyne Row in 1833.Sir Ralph Esher, a romance of Charles II.’s period, had a success, andCaptain Sword and Captain Pen(1835), 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 at Covent Garden of hisLegend of Florence, a play of considerable merit.Lover’s Amazements, a comedy, was acted several years afterwards, and was printed inLeigh Hunt’s Journal(1850-1851); and other plays remained in MS. In 1840 he wrote introductory notices to the work of R. B. Sheridan and to Moxon’s edition of the works of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh and Farquhar, a work which furnished the occasion of Macaulay’s essay on theDramatists of the Restoration. The pretty narrative poem ofThe Palfreywas published in 1842.
The time of Hunt’s greatest difficulties was between 1834 and 1840. He was at times in absolute want, and his distress was aggravated by domestic complications. By Macaulay’s recommendation he began to write for theEdinburgh Review. In 1844 he was further benefited by the generosity of Mrs Shelley and her son, who, on succeeding to the family estates, settled an annuity of £120 upon him; and in 1847 Lord John Russell procured him a civil list pension of £200. The fruits of the improved comfort and augmented leisure of these latter years were visible in the production of some charming volumes. Foremost among these are the companion books,Imagination and Fancy(1844), andWit and Humour(1846), two volumes of selections from the English poets. In these Leigh Hunt shows himself within a certain range the most refined, appreciative and felicitous of critics. Homer and Milton may be upon the whole beyond his reach, though even here he is great in the detection of minor and unapprehended beauties; with Spenser and the old English dramatists he is perfectly at home, and his subtle and discriminating criticism upon them, as well as upon his own great contemporaries, is continually bringing to light unsuspected beauties. His companion volume on the pastoral poetry of Sicily, quaintly entitledA Jar of Honey from Mount Hybla(1848), is almost equally delightful.The Town(2 vols., 1848) andMen, Women and Books(2 vols., 1847) are partly made up from former material.The Old Court Suburb(2 vols., 1855; ed. A. Dobson, 1902) is an anecdotic sketch of Kensington, where he long resided before his final removal to Hammersmith. In 1850 he published hisAutobiography(3 vols.), a naïve and accurate piece of self-portraiture, full of affectations, but on that account free from the affectation of unreality. It contains very detailed accounts of some of the most interesting periods of the author’s life, his education at Christ’s Hospital, his imprisonment, and his residence in Italy.A Book for a Corner(2 vols.) was published in 1849, and hisTable Talkappeared in 1851. In 1855 his narrative poems, original and translated, were collected under the title ofStories in Verse, with an interesting preface. He died at Putney on the 28th of August 1859.
Leigh Hunt’s virtues were charming rather than imposing or brilliant; he had no vices, but very many foibles. His great misfortune was that these foibles were for the most part of an undignified sort. His affectation is not comparable to Byron’s, nor his egotism to Wordsworth’s, but their very pettiness excites a sensation of the ludicrous. The very sincerity of his nature is detrimental to him; the whole man seems to be revealed in everything he ever wrote, and hence the most beautiful productions of his pen appear in a manner tainted by his really very pardonable weaknesses. Some of these, such as his helplessness in money matters, and his facility in accepting the obligations which he would have delighted to confer, involved him in painful and humiliating embarrassments, which seem to have been aggravated by the mismanagement of those around him. The notoriety of these things has deprived him of much of the honour due to him for his fortitude under the severest calamities, for his unremitting literary industry under the most discouraging circumstances, and for his uncompromising independence as a journalist and an author. It was his misfortune to be involved in politics, for he was as thorough a man of letters as ever existed, and most of his failings were more or less incidental to that character. But it is not every consummate man of letters of whom it can be unhesitatingly affirmed that he was brave, just and pious. When it was suggested that Leigh Hunt was the original of Harold Skimpole inBleak House, Charles Dickens denied that any of the shadows in the portrait were suggested by Hunt, who was, he said, “the very soul of truth and honour.â€
Leigh Hunt’s character as an author was the counterpart of his character as a man. In some respects his literary position is unique. 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; and he was incapable of discovering where familiarity became flippancy. But his poetry 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, of which, upon a small scale, there are probably no better examples than “Abou ben Adhem†and “Solomon’s Ring.†He possessed every qualification for a translator; and as an appreciative critic, whether literary or dramatic, he has hardly been equalled.
Leigh Hunt’s other works include:Amyntas, A Tale of the Woods(1820), translated from Tasso;The Seer, or Common-Places refreshed(2 pts., 1840-1841); three of the Canterbury Tales inThe Poems of Geoffrey Chaucer, modernized(1841);Stories from the Italian Poets(1846); compilations such asOne Hundred Romances of Real Life(1843); selections from Beaumont and Fletcher (1855); and, with S. Adams Lee,The Book of the Sonnet(Boston, 1867). HisPoetical Works(2 vols.), revised by himself and edited by Lee, were printed at Boston, U.S.A., in 1857, and an edition (London and New York) by his son, Thornton Hunt, appeared in 1860. Among volumes of selections are:Essays(1887), ed. A. Symons;Leigh Hunt as Poet and Essayist(1889), ed. C. Kent;Essays and Poems(1891), ed. R. B. Johnson for the “Temple Library.â€HisAutobiographywas revised by himself shortly before his death, and edited (1859) by his son Thornton Hunt, who also arranged hisCorrespondence(2 vols., 1862). Additional letters were printed by the Cowden Clarkes in theirRecollections of Writers(1878). TheAutobiographywas edited (2 vols., 1903) with full bibliographical note by R. Ingpen. A bibliography of his works was compiled by Alexander Ireland (List of the Writings of William Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt, 1868). There are short lives of Hunt by Cosmo Monkhouse (“Great Writers,†1893) and by R. B. Johnson (1896).
Leigh Hunt’s other works include:Amyntas, A Tale of the Woods(1820), translated from Tasso;The Seer, or Common-Places refreshed(2 pts., 1840-1841); three of the Canterbury Tales inThe Poems of Geoffrey Chaucer, modernized(1841);Stories from the Italian Poets(1846); compilations such asOne Hundred Romances of Real Life(1843); selections from Beaumont and Fletcher (1855); and, with S. Adams Lee,The Book of the Sonnet(Boston, 1867). HisPoetical Works(2 vols.), revised by himself and edited by Lee, were printed at Boston, U.S.A., in 1857, and an edition (London and New York) by his son, Thornton Hunt, appeared in 1860. Among volumes of selections are:Essays(1887), ed. A. Symons;Leigh Hunt as Poet and Essayist(1889), ed. C. Kent;Essays and Poems(1891), ed. R. B. Johnson for the “Temple Library.â€
HisAutobiographywas revised by himself shortly before his death, and edited (1859) by his son Thornton Hunt, who also arranged hisCorrespondence(2 vols., 1862). Additional letters were printed by the Cowden Clarkes in theirRecollections of Writers(1878). TheAutobiographywas edited (2 vols., 1903) with full bibliographical note by R. Ingpen. A bibliography of his works was compiled by Alexander Ireland (List of the Writings of William Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt, 1868). There are short lives of Hunt by Cosmo Monkhouse (“Great Writers,†1893) and by R. B. Johnson (1896).
1Walter Coulson (1794?-1860), lawyer and journalist, was at one time amanuensis to Jeremy Bentham, and became in 1823 editor of theGlobe.2John 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 asThe Garden of Florence and other Poems. He wrote some admirable sonnets, one of which is addressed to Keats.
1Walter Coulson (1794?-1860), lawyer and journalist, was at one time amanuensis to Jeremy Bentham, and became in 1823 editor of theGlobe.
2John 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 asThe Garden of Florence and other Poems. He wrote some admirable sonnets, one of which is addressed to Keats.
HUNT, ROBERT(1807-1887), English natural philosopher, was born at Devonport on the 6th of September 1807. His father, a naval officer, was drowned while Robert was a youth. He began to study in London for the medical profession, but ill-health caused him to return to the west of England, and in 1840 he became secretary to the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society at Falmouth. Here he was brought into contact with Robert Were Fox, and carried on some physical and chemical investigations with him. He took up photography with great zeal, following Daguerre’s discovery, and introducing new processes. HisManual of Photography(1841, ed. 5, 1857) was the first English treatise on the subject. He also experimented generally on the action of light, and publishedResearches on Light(1844). In 1845 he accepted the invitation of Sir Henry de la Beche to become keeper of mining records at the Museum of Economic (afterwards “Practicalâ€) Geology, and when the school of mines was established in 1851 he lectured for two years on mechanical science, and afterwards for a short time onexperimental physics. His principal work was the collection and editing of theMineral Statisticsof the United Kingdom, and this he continued to the date of his retirement (1883), when the mining record office was transferred to the Home Office. He was elected F.R.S. in 1854. In 1884 he published a large volume onBritish Mining, in which the subject was dealt with very fully from an historical as well as a practical point of view. He also edited the fifth and some later editions of Ure’sDictionary of Arts, Mines and Manufactures. He died in London on the 17th of October 1887. A mineralogical museum at Redruth has been established in his memory.
HUNT, THOMAS STERRY(1826-1892), American geologist and chemist, was born at Norwich, Conn., on the 5th of September 1826. He lost his father when twelve years old, and had to earn his own livelihood. In the course of two years he found employment in a printing office, in an apothecary’s shop, in a book store and as a clerk. He became interested in natural science, and especially in chemical and medical studies, and in 1845 he was elected a member of the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists at Yale—a body which four years later became the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1848 he read a paper in PhiladelphiaOn Acid Springs and Gypsum Deposits of the Onondaga Salt Group. At Yale he became assistant to Professor B. Silliman, Jun., and in 1846 was appointed chemist to the Geological Survey of Vermont. In 1847 he was appointed to similar duties on the Canadian Geological Survey at Montreal under Sir William Logan, and this post he held until 1872. In 1859 he was elected F.R.S., and he was one of the original members and president of the Royal Society of Canada. He was a frequent contributor to scientific journals, writing on the crystalline limestones, the origin of continents, the chemistry of the primeval earth, on serpentines, &c. He also wrote a notable “Essay on the History of the names Cambrian and Silurian†(Canadian Naturalist, 1872), in which the claims of Sedgwick, with respect to the grouping of the Cambrian strata, were forcibly advocated. He died in New York City on the 12th of February 1892.
His publications includeChemical and Geological Essays(1875, ed. 2, 1879);Mineral Physiology and Physiography(1886);A New Basis for Chemistry(1887, ed. 3, 1891);Systematic Mineralogy(1891). See an obituary notice by Persifor Frazer,Amer. Geologist(xi. Jan. 1893), with portrait.
His publications includeChemical and Geological Essays(1875, ed. 2, 1879);Mineral Physiology and Physiography(1886);A New Basis for Chemistry(1887, ed. 3, 1891);Systematic Mineralogy(1891). See an obituary notice by Persifor Frazer,Amer. Geologist(xi. Jan. 1893), with portrait.
HUNT, WILLIAM HENRY(1790-1864), English water-colour painter, was born near Long Acre, London, on the 28th of March 1790. He was apprenticed about 1805 to John Varley, the landscape-painter, with whom he remained five or six years, exhibiting three oil pictures at the Royal Academy in 1807. He was early connected with the Society of Painters in Water-colour, of which body, then in a transition state, he was elected associate in 1824, and full member in 1827. To its exhibitions he was until the year of his death one of the most prolific contributors. Many years of Hunt’s uneventful and industrious life were passed at Hastings. He died of apoplexy on the 10th of February 1864. Hunt was one of the creators of the English school of water-colour painting. His subjects, especially those of his later life, are extremely simple; but, by the delicacy, humour and fine power of their treatment, they rank second to works of the highest art only. Considered technically, his works exhibit all the resources of the water-colour painter’s craft, from the purest transparent tinting to the boldest use of body-colour, rough paper and scraping for texture. His sense of colour is perhaps as true as that of any English artist. “He was,†says Ruskin, “take him for all in all, the finest painter of still life that ever existed.†Several characteristic examples of Hunt’s work, as the “Boy and Goat,†“Brown Study†and “Plums, Primroses and Birds’ Nests†are in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
HUNT, WILLIAM HOLMAN(1827-1910), English artist, was born in London on the 2nd of April 1827. An ancestor on his father’s side bore arms against Charles I., and went over to Holland, where he fought in the Protestant cause. He returned with William III., but the family failed to recover their property. Holman Hunt’s father was the manager of a city warehouse, with tastes superior to his position in life. He loved books and pictures, and encouraged his son to pursue art as an amusement, though not as a profession. At the age of twelve and a half Holman Hunt was placed in a city office, but he employed his leisure in reading, drawing and painting, and at sixteen began an independent career as an artist. When he was between seventeen and eighteen he entered the Royal Academy schools, where he soon made acquaintance with his lifelong friend John Everett Millais, then a boy of fifteen. In 1846 Holman Hunt sent to the Royal Academy his first picture (“Hark!â€), which was followed by “Dr Rochecliffe performing Divine Service in the Cottage of Joceline Joliffe at Woodstock,†in 1847, and “The Flight of Madeline and Porphyrio†(from Keats’sEve of St Agnes) in 1848. In this year he and Millais, with the co-operation of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and others, initiated the famous Pre-Raphaelite movement in art. Typical examples of the new creed were furnished in the next year’s Academy by Millais’s “Isabella†and Holman Hunt’s “Rienzi vowing to obtain Justice for the Death of his Young Brother.†This last pathetic picture, which was sold to Mr Gibbons for £105, was followed in 1850 by “A Converted British Family sheltering a Christian Missionary from the Persecution of the Druids†(bought by Mr Combe, of the Clarendon Press, Oxford, for £150), and in 1851 by “Valentine protecting Sylvia from Proteus.†This scene fromThe Two Gentlemen of Veronawas very warmly praised by Ruskin (in letters toThe Times), who declared that as studies both of drapery and of every minor detail there had been nothing in art so earnest and complete since the days of Albert Dürer. It gained a prize at Liverpool, and is reckoned as the finest of Holman Hunt’s earlier works. In 1852 he exhibited “A Hireling Shepherd.†“Claudio and Isabella,†fromMeasure for Measure, and a brilliant study of the Downs near Hastings, called in the catalogue “Our English Coasts, 1852†(since generally known as “Strayed Sheepâ€), were exhibited in 1853. For three of his works Holman Hunt was awarded prizes of £50 and £60 at Liverpool and Birmingham, but in 1851 he had become so discouraged by the difficulty of selling his pictures, that he had resolved to give up art and learn farming, with a view to emigration. In 1854 he achieved his first great success by the famous picture of “The Light of the World,†an allegorical representation of Christ knocking at the door of the human soul. This work produced perhaps the greatest effect of any religious painting of the century. “For the first time in England,†wrote William Bell Scott, “a picture became a subject of conversation and general interest from one end of the island to the other, and indeed continued so for many years.†“The Awakening Conscience,†exhibited at the same time, depicted a tragic moment in a life of sin, when a girl, stricken with memories of her innocent childhood, rises suddenly from the knees of her paramour. The inner meaning of both these pictures was explained by Ruskin in letters toThe Timesin May 1854. “The Light of the World†was purchased by Mr Combe, and was given by his wife to Keble College. In 1904 Holman Hunt completed a second “Light of the World,†slightly altered from the original, the execution of which was due to his dissatisfaction with the way in which the Keble picture was shown there; and he intended the second edition of it for as wide public exhibition as possible. It was acquired by Mr Charles Booth, who arranged for the exhibition of the new “Light of the World†in all the large cities of the colonies.
In January 1854 Holman Hunt left England for Syria and Palestine with the desire to revivify on canvas the facts of Scripture history, “surrounded by the very people and circumstances of the life in Judaea of old days.†The first fruit of this idea, which may be said to have dominated the artist’s life, was “The Scapegoat,†a solitary outcast animal standing alone on the salt-encrusted shores of the Dead Sea, with the mountains of Edom in the distance, seen under a gorgeous effect of purple evening light. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1856, together with three Eastern landscapes. His next picture (1860), one of the most elaborate and most successful of his works, was “The Finding of our Saviour in the Temple.†Like all hisimportant pictures, it was the work of years. Many causes contributed to the delay in its completion, including a sentence of what was tantamount to excommunication (afterwards revoked) passed on all Jews acting as models. Thousands crowded to see this picture, which was exhibited in London and in many English provincial towns. It was purchased for £5500, and is now in the Birmingham Municipal Art Gallery. Holman Hunt’s next great religious picture was “The Shadow of Death†(exhibited separately in 1873), an imaginary incident in the life of our Lord, who, lifting His arms with weariness after labour in His workshop, throws a shadow on the wall as of a man crucified, which is perceived by His mother. This work was presented to Manchester by Sir William Agnew. Meanwhile there had appeared at the Royal Academy in 1861 “A Street in Cairo: The Lanternmaker’s Courtship,†and in 1863 “The King of Hearts,†and a portrait of the Right Hon. Stephen Lushington, D.C.L. In 1866 came “Isabella and the Pot of Basil,†“London Bridge on the Night of the Marriage of the Prince of Wales,†and “The Afterglow.†In 1867 Holman Hunt sent a charming head of “A Tuscan Girl†to the Grosvenor Gallery and two pictures to the Royal Academy. These were “Il dolce far niente†and a lifelike study of pigeons in rain called “The Festival of St Swithin,†now in the Taylor Building, Oxford, with many others of this artist’s work. After two years’ absence Holman Hunt returned to Jerusalem in 1875, where he was engaged upon his great picture of “The Triumph of the Innocents,†which proved to be the most serious labour of his life. The subject is an imaginary episode of the flight into Egypt, in which the Holy Family are attended by a procession of the Holy Innocents, marching along the waters of life and illuminated with unearthly light. Its execution was delayed by an extraordinary chapter of accidents. For months Holman Hunt waited in vain for the arrival of his materials, and at last he unfortunately began on an unsuitable piece of linen procured in despair at Jerusalem. Other troubles supervened, and when he arrived in England he found his picture in such a state that he was compelled to abandon it and begin again. The new version of the work, which is somewhat larger and changed in several points, was not completed till 1885. Meanwhile the old picture was relined and so skilfully treated that the artist was able to complete it satisfactorily, and there are now two pictures entitled “The Triumph of the Innocents,†one in the Liverpool, the other in the Birmingham Art Gallery. The pictures exhibited between 1875 and 1885 included “The Ship,†a realistic picture of the deck of a passenger ship by night (1878), and portraits of his son (1880), Sir Richard Owen (1881) and Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1884). All of these were exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery, where they were followed by “The Bride of Bethlehem†(1885), “Amaryllis†and a portrait of his son (tracing a drawing on a window) in 1886. His most important later work is “May-Day, Magdalen Tower,†a record of the service of song which has been held on the tower of Magdalen, Oxford, at sunrise on May-Day from time immemorial. The subject had interested the artist for a great many years, and, after “The Triumph of the Innocents†was completed, he worked at it with his usual devotion, climbing up the tower for weeks together in the early morning to study the sunrise from the top. This radiant poem of the simplest and purest devotion was exhibited at the Gainsborough Gallery in Old Bond Street in 1891. He continued to send occasional contributions to the exhibitions of the Royal Water-Colour Society, to the New Gallery and to the New English Art Club. One of the most remarkable of his later works (New Gallery, 1899) is “The Miracle of Sacred Fire in the Church of the Sepulchre, Jerusalem.â€
By his strong and constant individuality, no less than by his peculiar methods of work, Holman Hunt holds a somewhat isolated position among artists. He remained entirely unaffected by all the various movements in the art-world after 1850. His ambition was always “to serve as high priest and expounder of the excellence of the works of the Creator.†He spent too much labour on each work to complete many; but perhaps no painter of the 19th century produced so great an impression by a few pictures as the painter of “The Light of the World,†“The Scapegoat,†“The Finding of our Saviour in the Temple†and “The Triumph of the Innocentsâ€; and his greatness was recognized by his inclusion in the Order of Merit. HisHistory of Pre-Raphaelitism, a subject on which he could speak as a first authority, but not without dissent from at least one living member of the P.R.B., was published in 1905. On the 7th of September 1910 he died in London, and on September 12th his remains, after cremation at Golder’s Green, were buried in St Paul’s Cathedral, with national honours.
See Archdeacon Farrar and Mrs Alice Meynell, “William Holman Hunt, his Life and Work†(Art Annual) (London, 1893); John Ruskin,Modern Painters;The Art of England(Lecture) [consult Gordon Crauford’sRuskin’s Notes on the Pictures of Mr Holman Hunt, 1886]; Robert de la Sizeranne,La Peinture anglaise contemporaine(Paris, 1895); W. B. Scott,Autobiographical Notes; W. M. Rossetti,Pre-Raphaelite Diaries and Letters; Percy H. Bate,The Pre-Raphaelite Painters(1899); Sir W. Bayliss,Five Great Painters of the Victorian Era(1902).
See Archdeacon Farrar and Mrs Alice Meynell, “William Holman Hunt, his Life and Work†(Art Annual) (London, 1893); John Ruskin,Modern Painters;The Art of England(Lecture) [consult Gordon Crauford’sRuskin’s Notes on the Pictures of Mr Holman Hunt, 1886]; Robert de la Sizeranne,La Peinture anglaise contemporaine(Paris, 1895); W. B. Scott,Autobiographical Notes; W. M. Rossetti,Pre-Raphaelite Diaries and Letters; Percy H. Bate,The Pre-Raphaelite Painters(1899); Sir W. Bayliss,Five Great Painters of the Victorian Era(1902).
(C. Mo.)
HUNT, WILLIAM MORRIS(1824-1879), American painter, was born at Brattleboro, Vermont, on the 31st of March 1824. His father’s family were large landowners in the state. He was for a time (1840) at Harvard, but his real education began when he accompanied his mother and brother to Europe, where he studied with Couture in Paris and then came under the influence of Jean François Millet. The companionship of Millet had a lasting influence on Hunt’s character and style, and his work grew in strength, in beauty and in seriousness. He was the real introducer of the Barbizon school to America, and he more than any other turned the rising generation of American painters towards Paris. On his return in 1855 he painted some of his most beautiful pictures, all reminiscent of his life in France and of Millet’s influence. Such are “The Belated Kid,†“Girl at the Fountain,†“Hurdy-Gurdy Boy,†&c. But the public called for portraits, and it became the fashion to sit to him, among his best paintings in this kind being those of William M. Evarts, Mrs Charles Francis Adams, the Rev. James Freeman Clarke, William H. Gardner, Chief Justice Shaw and Judge Horace Gray. Unfortunately many of his paintings and sketches, together with five large Millets and other art treasures collected by him in Europe, were destroyed in the great Boston fire of 1872. Among his later works American landscapes predominated. They also include the “Bathersâ€â€”twice painted—and the allegories for the senate chamber of the State Capitol at Albany, N.Y., now lost by the disintegration of the stone panels on which they were painted. Hunt was drowned at the Isles of Shoals on the 8th of September 1879. His book,Talks about Art(London, 1878), is well known.
His brother,Richard Morris Hunt(1828-1895), the famous architect, was born in Brattleboro, Vermont, on the 31st of October 1828. He studied in Europe (1843-1854), mainly in the École des Beaux Arts at Paris, and in 1854 was appointed inspector of works on the buildings connecting the Tuileries with the Louvre. Under Hector Lefuel he designed the Pavilion de la Bibliothèque, opposite the Palais Royal. In 1855 he returned to New York, and was employed on the extension of the Capitol at Washington. He designed the Lenox Library, the Stuyvesant and theTribunebuildings in New York; the theological library, and Marquand chapel at Princeton; the Divinity College and the Scroll and Key building at Yale; the Vanderbilt mausoleum on Staten Island, and the Yorktown monument. For the Administration Building at the World’s Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893 Hunt received the gold medal of the Institute of British Architects. Among the most noteworthy of his domestic buildings were the residences of W. K. Vanderbilt and Henry G. Marquand in New York City; George W. Vanderbilt’s country house at Biltmore, and several of the large “cottages†at Newport, R.I., including “Marble House†and “The Breakers.†He was one of three foreign members of the Italian Society of St Luke, an honorary and corresponding member of the Académie des Beaux Arts and of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. He was the first to command respect in foreign countries for American architecture, and was the leaderof a school that has established in the United States the manner and the traditions of the Beaux Arts. He took a prominent part in the founding of the American Institute of Architects, and, from 1888, was its president. His talent was eminently practical; and he was almost equally successful in the ornate style of the early Renaissance in France, in the picturesque style of his comfortable villas, and the monumental style of the Lenox Library. There is a beautiful memorial to Hunt in the wall of Central Park, opposite this building, erected in 1898 by the associated art and architectural societies of New York, from designs by Daniel C. French and Bruce Price. He died on the 31st of July 1895.
HUNTER, JOHN(1728-1793), British physiologist and surgeon, was born on the 13th1of February 1728, at Long Calderwood, in the parish of East Kilbride, Lanarkshire, being the youngest of the ten children of John and Agnes Hunter. His father, who died on the 30th of October 1741,2aged 78, was descended from the old Ayrshire family of Hunter of Hunterston, and his mother was the daughter of a Mr Paul, treasurer of Glasgow. Hunter is said to have made little progress at school, being averse to its restraints and pursuits, and fond of country amusements. When seventeen years old he went to Glasgow, where for a short time he assisted his brother-in-law, Mr Buchanan, a cabinetmaker. Being desirous at length of some settled occupation, he obtained from his brother William (q.v.) permission to aid, under Mr Symonds, in making dissections in his anatomical school, then the most celebrated in London, intending, should he be unsuccessful there, to enter the army. He arrived accordingly in the metropolis in September 1748, about a fortnight before the beginning of his brother’s autumnal course of lectures. After succeeding beyond expectation with the dissection of the muscles of an arm, he was entrusted with a similar part injected, and from the excellence of his second essay Dr Hunter predicted that he would become a good anatomist. Seemingly John Hunter had hitherto received no instruction in preparation for the special course of life upon which he had entered.
Hard-working, and singularly patient and skilful in dissection, Hunter had by his second winter in London acquired sufficient anatomical knowledge to be entrusted with the charge of his brother’s practical class. In the summer months of 1749-1750, at Chelsea Military Hospital, he attended the lectures and operations of William Cheselden, on whose retirement in the following year he became a surgeon’s pupil at St Bartholomew’s, where Percivall Pott was one of the senior surgeons. In the summer of 1752 he visited Scotland. Sir Everard Home and, following him, Drewry Ottley state that Hunter began in 1754 to assist his brother as his partner in lecturing; according, however, to theEuropean Magazinefor 1782, the office of lecturer was offered to Hunter by his brother in 1758, but declined by him on account of the “insuperable embarrassments and objections†which he felt to speaking in public. In 1754 he became a surgeon’s pupil at St George’s Hospital, where he was appointed house-surgeon in 1756.3During the period of his connexion with Dr Hunter’s school he, in addition to other labours, solved the problem of the descent of the testis in the foetus, traced the ramifications of the nasal and olfactory nerves within the nose, experimentally tested the question whether veins could act as absorbents, studied the formation of pus and the nature of the placental circulation, and with his brother earned the chief merit of practically proving the function and importance of the lymphatics in the animal economy. On the 5th of June 1755,4he was induced to enter as a gentleman commoner at St Mary’s Hall, Oxford, but his instincts would not permit him, to use his own expression, “to stuff Latin and Greek at the university.†Some three and thirty years later he thus significantly wrote of an opponent: “Jesse Foot accuses me of not understanding the dead languages; but I could teach him that on the dead body which he never knew in any language dead or living.â€5Doubtless, however, linguistic studies would have served to correct in him what was perhaps a natural defect—a difficulty in the presentation of abstract ideas not wholly attributable to the novelty of his doctrines.
An attack of inflammation of the lungs in the spring of 1759 having produced symptoms threatening consumption, by which the promising medical career of his brother James had been cut short, Hunter obtained in October 1760 the appointment of staff-surgeon in Hodgson and Keppel’s expedition to Belleisle. With this he sailed in 1761. In the following year he served with the English forces on the frontier of Portugal. Whilst with the army he acquired the extensive knowledge of gunshot wounds embodied in his important treatise (1794) on that subject, in which, amongst other matters of moment, he insists on the rejection of the indiscriminate practice of dilating with the knife followed almost universally by surgeons of his time. When not engaged in the active duties of his profession, he occupied himself with physiological and other scientific researches. Thus, in 1761, off Belleisle, the conditions of the coagulation of the blood were among the subjects of his inquiries.6Later, on land, he continued the study of human anatomy, and arranged his notes and memoranda on inflammation; he also ascertained by experiment that digestion does not take place in snakes and lizards during hibernation, and observed that enforced vigorous movement at that season proves fatal to such animals, the waste so occasioned not being compensated, whence he drew the inference that, in the diminution of the power of a part attendant on mortification, resort to stimulants which increase action without giving real strength is inadvisable.7A MS. catalogue by Hunter, probably written soon after his return from Portugal, shows that he had already made a collection of about two hundred specimens of natural and morbid structures.
On arriving in England early in 1763, Hunter, having retired from the army on half-pay, took a house in Golden Square, and began the career of a London surgeon. Most of the metropolitan practice at the time was held by P. Pott, C. Hawkins, Samuel Sharp, Joseph Warner and Robert Adair; and Hunter sought to eke out his at first slender income by teaching practical anatomy and operative surgery to a private class. His leisure was devoted to the study of comparative anatomy, to procure subjects for which he obtained the refusal of animals dying in the Tower menagerie and in various travelling zoological collections. In connexion with his rupture of a tendo Achillis,8in 1767, he performed on dogs several experiments which, with the illustrations in his museum of the reunion of such structures after division, laid the foundation of the modern practice of cutting through tendons (tenotomy) for the relief of distorted and contracted joints. In the same year he was elected F.R.S. His first contribution to thePhilosophical Transactions, with theexception of a supplement to a paper by J. Ellis in the volume for 1766, was an essay on post-mortem digestion of the stomach, written at the request of Sir J. Pringle, and read on the 18th of June 1772, in which he explained that phenomenon as a result of the action of the gastric juice.9On the 9th of December 1768 he was elected a surgeon to St George’s Hospital, and, soon after, a member of the Corporation of Surgeons. He now began to take house-pupils. Among these were Edward Jenner, who came to him in 1770, and until the time of Hunter’s death corresponded with him on the most intimate and affectionate terms, W. Guy, Dr P. S. Physick of Philadelphia, and Everard Home, his brother-in-law. William Lynn and Sir A. Carlisle, though not inmates of his house, were frequent visitors there. His pupils at St George’s included John Abernethy, Henry Cline, James Earle and Astley Cooper. In 1770 he settled in Jermyn Street, in the house which his brother William had previously occupied; and in July 1771 he married Anne, the eldest daughter of Robert Home, surgeon to Burgoyne’s regiment of light horse.10
From 1772 till his death Hunter resided during autumn at a house built by him at Earl’s Court, Brompton, where most of his biological researches were carried on. There he kept for the purpose of study and experiment the fishes, lizards, blackbirds, hedgehogs and other animals sent him from time to time by Jenner; tame pheasants and partridges, at least one eagle, toads, silkworms, and many more creatures, obtained from every quarter of the globe. Bees he had under observation in his conservatory for upwards of twenty years; hornets and wasps were also diligently studied by him. On two occasions his life was in risk from his pets—once in wrestling with a young bull, and again when he fearlessly took back to their dens two leopards which had broken loose among his dogs.
Choosing intuitively the only true method of philosophical discovery, Hunter, ever cautious of confounding fact and hypothesis, besought of nature the truth through the medium of manifold experiments and observations. “He had never read Bacon,†says G. G. Babington, “but his mode of studying nature was as strictly Baconian as if he had.â€11To Jenner, who had offered a conjectural explanation of a phenomenon, he writes, on the 2nd of August 1775: “I think your solution is just; but why think? why not try the experiment? Repeat all the experiments upon a hedgehog12as soon as you receive this, and they will give you the solution.†It was his axiom however, “that experiments should not be often repeated which tend merely to establish a principle already known and admitted, but that the next step should be the application of that principle to useful purposes†(“Anim. Oecon.,â€Works, iv. 86). During fifteen years he kept a flock of geese simply in order to acquaint himself with the development of birds in eggs, with reference to which he remarked: “It would almost appear that this mode of propagation was intended for investigation.†In his toxicological and other researches, in which his experience had led him to believe that the effects of noxious drugs are nearly similar in the brute creation and in man, he had already, in 1780, as he states, “poisoned some thousands of animals.â€13
By inserting shot at definite distances in the leg-bones of young pigs, and also by feeding them with madder, by which all fresh osseous deposits are tinged,14Hunter obtained evidence that bones increase in size, not by the intercalation of new amongst old particles, as had been imagined by H. L. Duhamel du Monceau, but by means of additions to their extremities and circumference, excess of calcareous tissue being removed by the absorbents. Some of his most extraordinary experiments were to illustrate the relation of the strength of constitution to sex. He exchanged the spurs of a young cock and a young pullet, and found that on the former the transplanted structure grew to a fair size, on the latter but little; whereas a spur from one leg of a cock transferred to its comb, a part well supplied with blood, grew more than twice as fast as that left on the other leg. Another experiment of his, which required many trials for success, was the engrafting of a human incisor on the comb of a cock.15The uniting of parts of different animals when brought into contact he attributed to the production of adhesive instead of suppurative inflammation, owing to their possession of “the simple living principle.â€16The effects of habit upon structure were illustrated by Hunter’s observation that in a sea-gull which he had brought to feed on barley the muscular parietes of the gizzard became greatly thickened. A similar phenomenon was noticed by him in the case of other carnivorous birds fed on a vegetable diet.
It was in 1772 that Hunter, in order effectually to gauge the extent of his own knowledge, and also correctly to express his views, which had been repeatedly misstated or ascribed to others, began his lectures on the theory and practice of surgery, at first delivered free to his pupils and a few friends, but subsequent to 1774 on the usual terms, four guineas. Though Pott, indeed, had perceived that the only true system of surgery is that which most closely accords with the curative efforts of nature, a rational pathology can hardly be said to have had at this time any existence; and it was generally assumed that a knowledge of anatomy alone was a sufficient foundation for the study of surgery. Hunter, unlike his contemporaries, to most of whom his philosophic habit of thought was a mystery, and whose books contained little else than relations of cases and modes of treatment, sought the reason for each phenomenon that came under his notice. The principles of surgery, he maintained, are not less necessary to be understood than the principles of other sciences; unless, indeed, the surgeon should wish to resemble “the Chinese philosopher whose knowledge consisted only in facts.†Too much attention, he remarked, cannot be paid to facts; yet a multitude of facts overcrowd the memory without advantage if they do not lead us to establish principles, by an acquaintance with which we learn the causes of diseases. Hunter’s course, which latterly comprised eighty-six lectures, delivered on alternate evenings between the hours of seven and eight, lasted from October to April. Some teachers of his time were content to dismiss the subjects of anatomy and surgery in a course of only six weeks’ duration. His class was usually small and never exceeded thirty. He was deficient in the gifts of a good extempore speaker, being in this respect a remarkable contrast to his brother William; and he read his lectures, seldom raising his eyes from the manuscript. His manner with hisauditory is stated to have been embarrassed and awkward, or, as Adams puts it (Obs. on Morbid Pois., p. 272), “frequently ungraceful,†and his language always unadorned; but that his “expressions for the explaining of his new theories rendered his lectures often unintelligible†is scarcely evident in his pupils’ notes still extant. His own and others’ errors and fallacies were exposed with equal freedom in his teaching. Occasionally he would tell his pupils, “You had better not write down that observation, for very likely I shall think differently next yearâ€; and once in answer to a question he replied, “Never ask me what I have said or what I have written; but, if you will ask me what my present opinions are, I will tell you.â€
In January 1776 Hunter was appointed surgeon-extraordinary to the king. He began in the same year his Croonian lectures on muscular motion, continued annually, except in 1777, till 1782: they were never published by him, being in his opinion too incomplete. In 1778 appeared the second part of hisTreatise on the Natural History of the Human Teeth, the first part of which was published in 1771. It was in the waste of the dental alveoli and of the fangs of shedding teeth that in 1754-1755, as he tells us, he received his first hint of the use of the absorbents. Abernethy (Physiological Lectures, p. 196) relates that Hunter, being once asked how he could suppose it possible for absorbents to do such things as he attributed to them, replied, “Nay, I know not, unless they possess powers similar to those which a caterpillar exerts when feeding on a leaf.†Hunter in 1780 read before the Royal Society a paper in which he laid claim to have been the first to make out the nature of the utero-placental circulation. His brother William, who had five years previously described the same in hisAnatomy of the Gravid Uterus, thereupon wrote to the Society attributing to himself this honour. John Hunter in a rejoinder to his brother’s letter, dated the 17th of February 1780, reiterated his former statement, viz. that his discovery, on the evening of the day in 1754 that he had made it in a specimen injected by a Dr Mackenzie, had been communicated by him to Dr Hunter. Thus arose an estrangement between the two Hunters, which continued until the time of William’s last illness, when his brother obtained permission to visit him.
In 1783 Hunter was elected a member of the Royal Society of Medicine and of the Royal Academy of Surgery at Paris, and took part in the formation of “A Society for the Improvement of Medical and Chirurgical Knowledge.â€17It appears from a letter by Hunter that in the latter part of 1783, he, with Jenner, had the subject of colour-blindness under consideration. As in that year the lease of his premises in Jermyn Street was to expire, he purchased the twenty-four years’ leasehold of two houses, the one on the east side of Leicester Square, the other in Castle Street with intervening ground. Between the houses he built in 1783-1785, at an expense of above £3000, a museum for his anatomical and other collections which by 1782 had cost him £10,000. The new edifice consisted of a hall 52 ft. long by 28 ft. wide, and lighted from the top, with a gallery all round, and having beneath it a lecture theatre. In April 1785 Hunter’s collections were removed into it under the superintendence of Home and William Bell,18and another assistant, André. Among the foreigners of distinction who inspected the museum, which was now shown by Hunter twice a year—in October to medical men, and in May to other visitors—were J. F. Blumenbach, P. Camper and A. Scarpa. In the acquisition of subjects for his varied biological investigations and of specimens for his museum, expense was a matter of small moment with Hunter. Thus he endeavoured, at his own cost, to obtain information respecting the Cetacea by sending out a surgeon to the North in a Greenland whaler. He is said, moreover, to have given, in June 1783, £500 for the body of O’Brien, or Byrne, the Irish giant, whose skeleton, 7 ft. 7 in. high, is so conspicuous an object in the museum of the College of Surgeons of London.19
Hunter, who in the spring of 1769-1772 had suffered from gout, in spring 1773 from spasm apparently in the pyloric region, accompanied by failure of the heart’s action (Ottley,Life, p. 44), and in 1777 from vertigo with symptoms of angina pectoris, had in 1783 another attack of the last mentioned complaint, to which he was henceforward subject when under anxiety or excitement of mind.
In May 1785,20chiefly to oblige William Sharp the engraver, Hunter consented to have his portrait taken by Sir Joshua Reynolds. He proved a bad sitter, and Reynolds made little satisfactory progress, till one day Hunter, while resting his somewhat upraised head on his left hand, fell into a profound reverie—one of those waking dreams, seemingly, which in his lectures he has so well described, when “the body loses the consciousness of its own existence.â€21The painter had now before him the man he would fain depict, and, turning his canvas upside down, he sketched out the admirable portrait which, afterwards skilfully restored by H. Farrar, is in the possession of the Royal College of Surgeons. A copy by Jackson, acquired from Lady Bell, is to be seen at the National Portrait Gallery, and St Mary’s Hall, Oxford, also possesses a copy. Sharp’s engraving of the original, published in 1788, is one of the finest of his productions. The volumes seen in Reynolds’ picture are a portion of the unpublished records of anatomical researches left by Hunter at his death, which, with other manuscripts, Sir Everard Home in 1812 removed from his museum, and eventually, in order, it has been supposed, to keep secret the source of many of his papers in thePhilosophical Transactions, and of facts mentioned in his lectures, committed to the flames.22
Among the subjects of Hunter’s physiological investigation in 1785 was the mode of growth of deer’s antlers. As he possessed the privilege of making experiments on the deer in Richmond Park, he in July of that year had a buck there caught and thrown, and tied one of its external carotid arteries. He observed that the antler which obtained its blood supply therefrom, then half-grown, became in consequence cold to the touch. Hunter debated with himself whether it would be shed in due time, or be longer retained than ordinarily. To his surprise he found, on re-examining the antler a week or two later, when the wound around the ligatured artery was healed, that it had regained its warmth, and was still increasing in size. Had, then, his operation been in some way defective? To determine this question, the buck was killed and sent to Leicester Fields. On examination Hunter ascertained that the external carotid had been duly tied, but that certain small branches of the artery above and below the ligature had enlarged, and by their anastomoses had restored the blood supply of the growing part. Thus it was evident that under “the stimulus of necessity,†to use a phrase of the experimenter, the smaller arterial channels arecapable of rapid increase in dimensions to perform the offices of the larger.23It happened that, in the ensuing December, there lay in one of the wards of St George’s Hospital a patient admitted for popliteal aneurism. The disease must soon prove fatal unless by some means arrested. Should the surgeon, following the usual and commonly fatal method of treatment, cut down upon the tumour, and, after tying the artery above and below it, evacuate its contents? Or should he adopt the procedure, deemed by Pott generally advisable, of amputating the limb above it? It was Hunter’s aim in his practice, even if he could not dispense with the necessity, at least to diminish the severity of operations, which he considered were an acknowledgment of the imperfection of the art of healing, and compared to “the acts of the armed savage, who attempts to get that by force which a civilized man would get by stratagem.†Since, he argued, the experiment with the buck had shown that collateral vessels are capable of continuing the circulation when passage through a main trunk is arrested, why should he not, in the aneurism case, leaving the absorbents to deal with the contents of the tumour, tie the artery in the sound parts, where it is tied in amputation, and preserve the limb? Acting upon this idea, he ligatured his patient’s femoral artery in the lower part of its course in the thigh, in the fibrous sheath enclosing the space since known as “Hunter’s canal.â€24The leg was found, some hours after the operation, to have acquired a temperature even above the normal.25At the end of January 1786, that is, in six weeks’ time, the patient was well enough to be able to leave the hospital. Thus it was that Hunter inaugurated an operation which has been the means of preserving to hundreds life with integrity of limb—an operation which, as the Italian P. Assalini, who saw it first performed, testifies, “excited the greatest wonder, and awakened the attention of all the surgeons in Europe.â€
Early in 1786 Hunter published hisTreatise on the Venereal Disease, which, like some of his previous writings, was printed in his own house. Without the aid of the booksellers, 1000 copies of it were sold within a twelvemonth. Although certain views therein expressed with regard to the relationship of syphilis have been proved erroneous, the work is a valuable compendium of observations of cases and modes of treatment (cf. John Hilton,Hunt. Orat.p. 40). Towards the end of the year appeared hisObservations on certain parts of the Animal Oeconomy, which, besides the more important of his contributions to thePhilosophical Transactions, contains nine papers on various subjects. In 1786 Hunter became deputy surgeon-general to the army; his appointment as surgeon-general and as inspector-general of hospitals followed in 1790. In 1787 he received the Royal Society’s Copley medal, and was also elected a member of the American Philosophical Society. On account of the increase in his practice and his impaired health, he now obtained the services of Home as his assistant at St George’s Hospital. The death of Pott in December 1788 secured to him the undisputed title of the first surgeon in England. He resigned to Home, in 1792, the delivery of his surgical lectures, in order to devote himself more fully to the completion of hisTreatise on the Blood, Inflammation and Gunshot Wounds, which was published by his executors in 1794. In this, his masterpiece, the application of physiology to practice is especially noticeable. Certain experiments described in the first part, which demonstrate that arterialization of the blood in respiration takes place by a process of diffusion of “pure air†or “vital air†(i.e.oxygen) through membrane, were made so early as the summer of 1755.
Hunter in 1792 announced to his colleagues at St George’s, who, he considered, neglected the proper instruction of the students under their charge, his intention no longer to divide with them the fees which he received for his hospital pupils. Against this innovation, however, the governors of the hospital decided in March 1793. Subsequently, by a committee of their appointing, a code of rules respecting pupils was promulgated, one clause of which, probably directed against an occasional practice of Hunter’s, stipulated that no person should be admitted as a student of the hospital without certificates that he had been educated for the medical profession. In the autumn two young Scotchmen, ignorant of the new rule, came up to town and applied to Hunter for admission as his pupils at St George’s. Hunter explained to them how he was situated, but promised to advance their request at the next board meeting at the hospital on the 16th of October. On that day, having finished a difficult piece of dissection, he went down to breakfast in excellent spirits and in his usual health. After making a professional call, he attended the board meeting. There the interruption of his remarks in behalf of his applicants by a flat contradiction from a colleague brought on one of the old spasmodic heart attacks; he ceased speaking, and retired into an adjoining room only to fall lifeless into the arms of Dr Robertson, one of the hospital physicians. After an hour had been spent in vain attempts to restore animation, his body was conveyed to his house in a sedan chair.26His remains were interred privately on the 22nd of October 1793, in the vaults of St Martin’s in the Fields. Thence, on the 28th of March 1859, through the instrumentality of F. T. Buckland, they were removed to Abbot Islip’s chapel in Westminster Abbey, to be finally deposited in the grave in the north aisle of the nave, close to the resting-place of Ben Jonson.