“You have excelled yourself—if not all your contemporaries—in the canto which I have just finished. I think it above the former books; but that is as it should be; it rises with the subject, the conception seems to me perfect, and the execution perhaps as nearly so as verse will admit. There is more originality than I recollect to have seen elsewhere within the same compass, and frequent and great happiness of expression.” The faults he said were “occasional quaintnesses and obscurity, and a kind of harsh and yet colloquial compounding of epithets, as if to avoid saying common things in a common way.”[58]
“You have excelled yourself—if not all your contemporaries—in the canto which I have just finished. I think it above the former books; but that is as it should be; it rises with the subject, the conception seems to me perfect, and the execution perhaps as nearly so as verse will admit. There is more originality than I recollect to have seen elsewhere within the same compass, and frequent and great happiness of expression.” The faults he said were “occasional quaintnesses and obscurity, and a kind of harsh and yet colloquial compounding of epithets, as if to avoid saying common things in a common way.”[58]
October 30, 1815, in reply to these objections Hunt sent forth this defense: “we accomodate ourselves to certain habitual, sophisticated phrases ofwrittenlanguage, and thus take away from real feeling of any sort the only languageit ever actually uses, which is thespokenlanguage.” At the same time he made a few alterations at Byron’s suggestion.[59]And again the latter wrote: “You have two excellent points in that poem—originality and Italianism.”[60]After theStory of Riminiappeared he wrote to Moore: “Leigh Hunt’s poem is a devilish good one—quaint, here and there, but with the substratum oforiginality, and with poetry about it that will stand the test.”[61]In 1818 Byron’s opinion had changed somewhat:
“When I sawRiminiin Ms., I told him I deemed it good poetry at bottom, disfigured only by a strange style. His answer was, that his style was a system, orupon system, or some other such cant; and when a man talks of system, his case is hopeless; so I said no more to him, and very little to anyone else. He believed his trash of vulgar phrases tortured into compound barbarisms to beoldEnglish[62]... Hunt, who had powers to make theStory of Riminias perfect as a fable of Dryden, has thought fit to sacrifice his genius to some unintelligible notion of Wordsworth, which I defy him to explain.[63]... A friend of mine calls ‘Rimini’Nimini Pimini; and ‘Foliage’Follyage. Perhaps he had a tumble in ‘climbing trees in the Hesperides’! But Rimini has a great deal of merit. There never were so many fine things spoiled as in ‘Rimini.’”[64]
“When I sawRiminiin Ms., I told him I deemed it good poetry at bottom, disfigured only by a strange style. His answer was, that his style was a system, orupon system, or some other such cant; and when a man talks of system, his case is hopeless; so I said no more to him, and very little to anyone else. He believed his trash of vulgar phrases tortured into compound barbarisms to beoldEnglish[62]... Hunt, who had powers to make theStory of Riminias perfect as a fable of Dryden, has thought fit to sacrifice his genius to some unintelligible notion of Wordsworth, which I defy him to explain.[63]... A friend of mine calls ‘Rimini’Nimini Pimini; and ‘Foliage’Follyage. Perhaps he had a tumble in ‘climbing trees in the Hesperides’! But Rimini has a great deal of merit. There never were so many fine things spoiled as in ‘Rimini.’”[64]
Hunt had a distinct theory of language based on a few crude principles. As his practical application of them had its effect upon Keats, a somewhat full consideration of them is desirable here. The first and most conspicuous one, promoted by what Hunt called “an idiomatic spirit in verse,”[65]was a preference for colloquial words.[66]He mistook for grace and fluency of diction, a turn of phrase that was without poetic connection and often in very poor taste. In dialogue, particularly, the effect is undignified. This professed doctrine was a fuller development[67]of the statement in the Advertisementto theLyrical Balladsof 1798: in Hunt’s opinion, Wordsworth failed to consider duly meter in its essential relations to poetry, and while Hunt himself desired a “return to nature and a natural style” he thought that Wordsworth had substituted puerility for simplicity and affectation for nature. Hunt’s acknowledged model for the poem was Dryden,[68]but Hunt’s colloquial phrasing, peculiar diction, elision,[69]and loose expansion approach much more closely to Chamberlayne’sPharronida(1689) than to anything in Dryden.[70]The following extract is one of many that might be cited as suggestive of Hunt’sStory of Rimini:
“To his cold clammy lipsJoining her balmy twins, she from them sipsSo much of death’s oppressing dews, that, byThat touch revived, his soul, though winged to flyHer ruined seat, takes time to breatheThese sad notes forth: “farewell, my dear, beneathMy fainting spirits sink.”[71]
Occasionally Hunt’s choice of colloquial words fitted the subject, as in theFeast of the Poets, where humor and satire permit such expressions as “bards of Old England had all been rung in,” “twiddling a sunbeam,” “bloated his wits,” “tricksy tenuity” or such words as “smack,” “pop-in” and “sing-song.” His poetical epistles suffer without injury such departures from dignified diction, but in other cases, of which theStory of Riminiis a notable example, a grave subject in the garb of everyday language is degraded into the incongruous and prosaic. It is in physical descriptions that this undignified diction most strikingly violates good taste. Examples are:
“And both their cheeks, like peaches on a tree,Leaned with a touch together, thrillingly.”“So lightsomely dropped in, his lordly back,His thigh so fitted for the tilt or dance.”
Sometimes the prosaic quality of Hunt’s diction is due to its being pitched upon a merely “society” level:
“May I come in? said he:—it made her start,—That smiling voice;—she coloured, pressed her heartA moment, as for breath and then with freeAnd usual tone said, ‘O Yes,—certainly.’”
Such a treatment of the meeting of Paolo and Francesca in the bower is wholly inadequate to the situation and the emotion of the moment. Additional illustrations of his colloquialisms from theStory of Riminiand from other poems of the same period are: “to bless his shabby eyes,” “that to the stander near looks awfully,” “banquet small, and cheerful, and considerate,” “clipsome waist,” “jauntiness behind and strength before” (description of a horse), “lend their streaming tails to the fond air,” “sweepy shape,” “cored in our complacencies,” “lumps of flowers,” “smooth, down-arching thigh,” “tapering with tremulous mass internally.”
Hunt’s second principle to be considered is the excessive use of vague and passionless words. Instances of such words to be found very frequently in his poetry are: fond, amiable, fair, rural, cordial, cheerful, gentle, calm, smooth, serene, earnest, lovely, balmy, dainty, mild, meek, tender, kind, elegant, quiet, sweet, fresh, pleasant, warm, social, and many others of like character.
A third principle was the employment of unusual words; examples are found in theStory of Riminiin the first edition and in other poems produced about this same time. In thePoetical Works, 1832, most of them have been discarded. The preface states that the “occasional quaintnesses and neologisms” which “formerly disfigured the poems did not arise from affectation but from the sheer license of animal spirits”; that they are not worth defending and that he has left only two in theStory of Rimini, “swirl” and “cored.” “Swaling” had been the most famous one in the poem because of the ridicule heaped upon it by the enemies of the Cockney School.
To use ordinary words in an extraordinary sense was a fourth principle. The effect was often extremely awkward.Core passes as a synonym for heart; fry occurs inRiminiin a strange sense; hip and tiptoe are employed with a special Huntian significance. Nouns and adjectives are used as verbs and verbs as nouns and adjectives with an unpoetical effect: cored (verb); drag (noun); frets (noun); feel (noun); patting (adjective); spanning (adjective); lull’d (adjective); smearings; measuring; doings.[72]
The use of compounds is a fifth distinguishing feature. Such combinations are found as bathing-air, house-warm lips, side-long pillowed meekness, fore-thoughted chess, pin-drop silence, tear-dipped feeling.
The sixth and last peculiarity is the preference for adjectives inyanding, many of them of his own coinage; for adverbs inly; and for unauthorized or awkward comparatives: examples are plumpy (cheeks), knify, perky, sweepy, farmy, bosomy, pillowy, arrowy, liny, leafy, scattery, winy, globy; hasting, silvering, doling, blubbing, firming, thickening, quickening, differing, perking; lightsomely, refreshfully, thrillingly, kneadingly, lumpishly, smilingly, preparingly, crushingly,[73]finelier, martialler, tastefuller, apter.
The colloquial vocabulary, the familiar tone, and the expansion of thought into phrases and clauses where it would have gained by condensed expression, give to theStory of Riminia prosaic and eccentric style. Yet Hunt declared he held in horror eccentricity and prosiness.[74]
In a discussion of the influence of Leigh Hunt upon the versification of his contemporaries and successors it is necessary to consider not only his theory but also the active part played by him as a conscious reviver of the older heroic couplet. In this reaction against the school of Pope, as also in the use of blank verse, he showed great independence in discarding approved models. The notes added to theFeast of the Poetsin 1814, when it was republished from theReflectorof1812, are important in this connection. They show a wide familiarity with modern poetry. He writes:
“The late Dr. Darwin, whose notion of poetical music, in common with that of Goldsmith and others, was of the school of Pope, though his taste was otherwise different, was perhaps the first, who by carrying it to the extreme pitch of sameness, and ringing it affectedly in one’s ears, gave the public at large a suspicion that there was something wrong in its nature. But of those who saw its deficiencies, part had the ambition without the taste or attention requisite for striking into a better path, and became eccentric in another extreme; while others, who saw the folly of both, were content to keep the beaten track and set a proper example to neither. By these appeals, however, the public ear has been excited to expect something better; and perhaps there was never a more favourable time than the present for an attempt to bring back the real harmonies of the English heroic, and to restore it to half the true principle of its music, variety. I am not here joining the cry of those, who affect to consider Pope as no poet at all. He is, I confess, in my judgment, at a good distance from Dryden, and at an immeasurable one from such men as Spenser and Milton; but if the author of theRape of the Lock, ofEloisa to Abelard, and of theElegy on an Unfortunate Lady, is no poet, then are fancy and feeling no properties belonging to poetry. I am only considering his versification; and upon that point I do not hesitate to say, that I regard him, not only as no master of his art, but as a very indifferent practiser, and one whose reputation will grow less and less, in proportion as the lovers of poetry become intimate with his great predecessors, and with the principles of musical beauty in general.”[75]
“The late Dr. Darwin, whose notion of poetical music, in common with that of Goldsmith and others, was of the school of Pope, though his taste was otherwise different, was perhaps the first, who by carrying it to the extreme pitch of sameness, and ringing it affectedly in one’s ears, gave the public at large a suspicion that there was something wrong in its nature. But of those who saw its deficiencies, part had the ambition without the taste or attention requisite for striking into a better path, and became eccentric in another extreme; while others, who saw the folly of both, were content to keep the beaten track and set a proper example to neither. By these appeals, however, the public ear has been excited to expect something better; and perhaps there was never a more favourable time than the present for an attempt to bring back the real harmonies of the English heroic, and to restore it to half the true principle of its music, variety. I am not here joining the cry of those, who affect to consider Pope as no poet at all. He is, I confess, in my judgment, at a good distance from Dryden, and at an immeasurable one from such men as Spenser and Milton; but if the author of theRape of the Lock, ofEloisa to Abelard, and of theElegy on an Unfortunate Lady, is no poet, then are fancy and feeling no properties belonging to poetry. I am only considering his versification; and upon that point I do not hesitate to say, that I regard him, not only as no master of his art, but as a very indifferent practiser, and one whose reputation will grow less and less, in proportion as the lovers of poetry become intimate with his great predecessors, and with the principles of musical beauty in general.”[75]
The remarks on Pope close with the hope that the imitation of the best work of Dryden, Milton and Spenser “might lead the poets of the present age to that proper mixture of sweetness and strength—of modern finish and ancient variety—from which Pope and his rhyming facilities have so long withheld us.”[76]Hunt closes with an appeal for the return to Italian models, and says that Hayley, in hisTriumphs ofTemperwas “the quickest of our late writers to point out the great superiority of the Italian school over the French.” He protests against the wide influence of Boileau.[77]
The Introduction to thePoetical Worksof 1832 contains a concise and technical statement of Hunt’s theory of the heroic couplet. He argues that the triplet tends to condensation, three lines instead of four; that it carries onward the fervor of the poet’s feeling, delivering him from the ordinary laws of his verse, and that it expresses continuity. Of the bracket he says: “I confess I like the very bracket that marks out the triplet to the reader’s eye, and prepares him for the music of it. It has a look like the bridge of a lute.”[78]The use of the Alexandrine in the heroic couplet, he avers, gives variety and energy. Double rhymes are defended on historical grounds. For himself he claims credit as a restorer, not an innovator, and prophesies that the perfection of the heroic couplet is “to come about by a blending between the inharmonious freedom of our old poets in general ... and the regularity of Dryden himself.... If anyone could unite the vigor of Dryden with the ready and easy variety of pause in the works of the late Mr. Crabbe, and the lovely poetic consciousness in theLamiaof Keats ... he would be a perfect master of the rhyming couplet.” A study of the heroic couplet from Dryden to Shelley based on two hundred lines from each poet has yielded the results indicated in the table on the following page.
Professor Saintsbury says: “There is no doubt that his [Hunt’s] versification inRimini(which may be described as Chaucerian in basis with a strong admixture of Dryden, further crossed and dashed slightly with the peculiar music of the followers of Spenser, especially Browne and Wither) had a very strong influence both on Keats and on Shelley, and that it drew from them music much better than itself. This fluent, musical, many-colored-verse was a capital medium for tale telling.”[79]Professor Herford marks it as the “starting point of that free or Chaucerian treatment of the heroic couplet andof the colloquial style, eschewing epigram and full of familiar turns, which Shelley inJulian and Maddalo, and Keats inLamia, made classical.”[82]Mr. R. B. Johnson calls it “a protest against the polished couplet of Pope—a protest already expressed to some extent in theLyrical Ballads, but through Hunt’s influence, guiding the pens of Keats, Shelley and some of his noblest successors.”[83]Mr. A. J. Kent says that “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 the heroic couplet.”[84]Leigh Hunt’s greatest mistake in the handling of the couplet has been clearly pointed out by Mr. Colvin, who says that he “blended the grave and the colloquial cadences of Dryden, without his characteristic nerve and energy in either.”[85]The late Dr. Garnett said that the ease and variety of Dryden was restored by Hunt to English literature.[86]Monkhouse pointed out that Keats and Shelley, more than Hunt, reaped the rewards of his revivification of the heroic couplet. The diffuseness of the diction of theStory of Riminiresults in a movement weaker than Dryden’s and less buoyant than Chaucer’s. Yet the verse is distinguished by a fluency and grace and melody that at times are very pleasing. It had a notable influence on English verse—an influence begun by others but strongly reinforced by Hunt. Further treatment of the influence of Hunt’s diction and versification upon Keats and Shelley is reserved for chapters II and III of the present study.
Hunt’s next poetical work afterRiminiwasFoliage, published in 1818. It is a collection of original poems under the titleGreenwoods, and of translations under the titleEvergreens.[87]In the preface Hunt announces the main features to be a love of sociability, of the country, and of the “fine imagination of the Greeks.”[88]The first predilection runs the gamut from “sociability” to “domestic interest” and is the most fundamental characteristic of the author and of his writing. In the preface toOne Hundred Romances of Real Lifehe declares sociability to be “the greatest of all interests.” It rarely failed to crop out when he was writing even on the gravest and most impersonal of subjects. In his intercourse with strangers, this same “sociability,” added to a natural kindliness and sympathy, caused a familiarity of bearing that was often misunderstood. TheNymphs, the longest poem of the volume, is founded on Greek mythology and is interesting in connection with Keats’s poems on classical subjects. Shelley said that theNymphswas “trulypoetical, in the intense and emphatic sense of the word. If 600 miles were not between us, I should say what pity thatglibwas not omitted, and that the poem is not so faultless as it is beautiful.”[89]In general Shelley overestimated Hunt’s poetry, though he saw some of its affectations. Shorter pieces were epistles to Byron, Moore, Hazlitt and Lamb—a kind of verse in which Hunt excelled, for his attitude and stylewere peculiarly adapted to the familiar tone permissible in such writing. Among Hunt’s best poems may be counted the sonnets to Shelley, Keats, Haydon, Raphael, and Kosciusko; those entitled theGrasshopper and the Cricket,To the Nile,On a Lock of Milton’s Hair, and the series on Hampstead. The suburban charms of Hampstead were very dear to Hunt and he never tired of celebrating them in poetry and in prose. No amount of derision from theQuarterlyorBlackwood’sstopped him. The general characteristics ofFoliageare much the same as those of theStory of Rimini. There are poor lines and good ones, never sustained power, and no poetry of a very high order. The subjects themselves are often unpoetical. Hunt obtrudes himself too frequently in a breezy, offhand manner. Byron’s opinion of the book was scathing:
“Of all the ineffable Centaurs that were ever begotten by self-love upon a Nightmare, I think ‘this monstrous Sagittary’ the most prodigious.He(Leigh H.) is an honest charlatan, who has persuaded himself into a belief of his own impostures, and talks Punch in pure simplicity of heart, taking himself (as poor Fitzgerald said ofhimself in theMorning Post) for Vates in both senses and nonsenses of the word. Did you [Moore] look at the translations of his own which he prefers to Pope and Cowper, and says so?—Did you read his skimble-skamble about Wordsworth being at the head of his ownprofession, in theeyesofthosewho followed it? I thought that poetry was anart, or anattribute, and not aprofession; but be it one, is that ... at the head ofyourprofession in your eyes?”[90]
“Of all the ineffable Centaurs that were ever begotten by self-love upon a Nightmare, I think ‘this monstrous Sagittary’ the most prodigious.He(Leigh H.) is an honest charlatan, who has persuaded himself into a belief of his own impostures, and talks Punch in pure simplicity of heart, taking himself (as poor Fitzgerald said ofhimself in theMorning Post) for Vates in both senses and nonsenses of the word. Did you [Moore] look at the translations of his own which he prefers to Pope and Cowper, and says so?—Did you read his skimble-skamble about Wordsworth being at the head of his ownprofession, in theeyesofthosewho followed it? I thought that poetry was anart, or anattribute, and not aprofession; but be it one, is that ... at the head ofyourprofession in your eyes?”[90]
Other poems belonging to this period areHero and LeanderandBacchus and Ariadnein 1819, and a translation of Tasso’sAmintain 1820. The first two show Hunt’s faculty for poetical narrative and description, and, in common with Keats, a partiality for classical subjects. The three are in no way radically different from the poems already considered.
TheLiterary Pocket Bookwhich Hunt edited in 1820, 1821 and 1822, theNew Monthly Magazineto which he began contributing in 1821, and theLiterary Examiner, which he established in 1823, complete the enumeration of his writings during the period of his association with Byron, Shelley and Keats. Beyond the contributions of Shelley and Keats to the first and the reviews of Byron’s poems in the third, they are unimportant here.
Keats’s meeting with Hunt—Growth of their friendship—Haydon’s intervention—Keats’s residence with Hunt—His departure for Italy—Hunt’s Criticism of Keats’s poetry—His influence on thePoems of 1817.
It was about the year 1815 that Keats showed to his former school friend, Charles Cowden Clarke, the following sonnet, the first indication the latter had that Keats had written poetry:
“What though, for showing truth to flatter’d state,Kind Hunt was shut in prison, yet has he,In his immortal spirit been as freeAs 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 flewWith daring Milton through the fields of air:To regions of his own his genius trueTook happy flights. Who shall his fame impairWhen thou art dead, and all thy wretched crew?”
This admiration, expressed before Keats had met Hunt, was due to the influence of the Clarke family and to Keats’s acquaintance withThe Examiner, which he saw regularly during his school days at Enfield and which he continued to borrow from Clarke during his medical apprenticeship. Clarke later showed to Leigh Hunt two or three of Keats’s poems. Of the reception of one of them (How Many Bards Gild the Lapses of Time) Clarke said:
“I could not but anticipate that Hunt would speak encouragingly, and indeed approvingly, of the compositions—written, too, by a youth under age; but my partial spirit was not prepared for the unhesitating and prompt admiration which broke forth before he had read twenty lines of the first poem.”[91]
“I could not but anticipate that Hunt would speak encouragingly, and indeed approvingly, of the compositions—written, too, by a youth under age; but my partial spirit was not prepared for the unhesitating and prompt admiration which broke forth before he had read twenty lines of the first poem.”[91]
Hunt invited Keats to visit him. Of this first meeting between the two men, Clarke wrote:
“That was a red letter day in the young poet’s life, and one which will never fade with me while memory lasts. The character and expression of Keats’s features would arrest even the casual passenger in the street; and now they were wrought to a tone of animation that I could not but watch with interest, knowing what was in store for him from the bland encouragement, and Spartan deference in attention, with fascinating conversational eloquence, that he was to encounter and receive.... The interview, which stretched into three ‘morning calls’, was the prelude to many after-scenes and saunterings about Caen Wood and its neighborhood; for Keats was suddenly made a familiar of the household, and was always welcomed.”[92]
“That was a red letter day in the young poet’s life, and one which will never fade with me while memory lasts. The character and expression of Keats’s features would arrest even the casual passenger in the street; and now they were wrought to a tone of animation that I could not but watch with interest, knowing what was in store for him from the bland encouragement, and Spartan deference in attention, with fascinating conversational eloquence, that he was to encounter and receive.... The interview, which stretched into three ‘morning calls’, was the prelude to many after-scenes and saunterings about Caen Wood and its neighborhood; for Keats was suddenly made a familiar of the household, and was always welcomed.”[92]
Hunt’s account of the meeting is as follows:
“I shall never forget the impression made upon me by the exuberant specimens of genuine though young poetry that were laid before me, and the promise of which was seconded by the fine fervid countenance of the writer. We became intimate on the spot, and I found the young poet’s heart as warm as his imagination. We read and we walked together, and used to write verse of an evening upon a given subject. No imaginative pleasure was left untouched by us, or unenjoyed; from the recollections of the bards and patriots of old, to the luxury of a summer rain at our window, or the clicking of the coal in the winter-time. Not long afterwards, having the pleasure of entertaining at dinner Mr. Godwin, Mr. Hazlitt, and Mr. Basil Montagu, I showed the verses of my young friend, and they were pronounced to be as extraordinary as I thought them.”[93]
“I shall never forget the impression made upon me by the exuberant specimens of genuine though young poetry that were laid before me, and the promise of which was seconded by the fine fervid countenance of the writer. We became intimate on the spot, and I found the young poet’s heart as warm as his imagination. We read and we walked together, and used to write verse of an evening upon a given subject. No imaginative pleasure was left untouched by us, or unenjoyed; from the recollections of the bards and patriots of old, to the luxury of a summer rain at our window, or the clicking of the coal in the winter-time. Not long afterwards, having the pleasure of entertaining at dinner Mr. Godwin, Mr. Hazlitt, and Mr. Basil Montagu, I showed the verses of my young friend, and they were pronounced to be as extraordinary as I thought them.”[93]
Leigh Hunt discovered Keats, by no means a small thing, for as he himself has said: “To admire and comment upon the genius that two or three hundred years have applauded, and to discover what will partake of applause two or three hundred years hence, are processes of a very different description.”[94]With the same power of prophetic discernment, writing in 1828, he realized to the full the greatness of Keats and predicted that growth of his fame in the future which has since taken place.[95]Keats’s account of his reception is given in the sonnetKeen fitful gusts are whisp’ring here and there:
“For I am brimfull of the friendlinessThat in a little cottage I have found;Of fair hair’d Milton’s eloquent distress,And all his love for gentle Lycid drown’d;Of lovely Laura in her light green dress,And faithful Petrarch gloriously crowned.”
The date of the introduction of Keats to Hunt has been placed variously from November, 1815, to the end of the year 1816. He says:
“It was not at Hampstead that I first saw Keats. It was in York Buildings, in the New Road (No. 8), where I wrote part of theIndicator—and he resided with me while in Mortimer Terrace, Kentish Town (No. 13), where I concluded it. I mention this for the curious in such things, among whom I am one.”[96]
“It was not at Hampstead that I first saw Keats. It was in York Buildings, in the New Road (No. 8), where I wrote part of theIndicator—and he resided with me while in Mortimer Terrace, Kentish Town (No. 13), where I concluded it. I mention this for the curious in such things, among whom I am one.”[96]
If this statement were correct, it would make the meeting about two or three years later than has generally been supposed, for Leigh Hunt did not move to York Buildings until 1818, and he did not begin work on theIndicatoruntil October, 1819. Clarke states positively that the meeting took place at Hampstead. From this evidence Mr. Colvin has suggested the early spring of 1816 as the most probable date.[97]What seems better evidence than any that has yet been brought forward is a passage inThe Examinerof June 1, 1817, in Hunt’s review of Keats’sPoemsof 1817, where he says that the poet is a personal friend whom he announced to the public a short time ago (this allusion can only be to an article inThe Examinerof December 1, 1816) and that the friendship dates from “no greater distance of time than the announcement above mentioned. We had published one of his sonnets in our paper,[98]without knowing more of him than of any other anonymous correspondent; but at the period in question a friend brought us one morning some copies in verse, which he said were from the pen of a youth.... We had not read more than a dozen lines when we recognized a young poet indeed.” This seemsconclusive evidence that the meeting did not take place until the winter of 1816, for Hunt’s testimony written in 1817, when the circumstance was fresh in his mind is certainly more trustworthy than his impression of it at the time that he revised hisAutobiographyin 1859 at the age of seventy-five years.
The two men, before they came in contact, had much in common, and Hunt’s influence, while in some cases an inspiring force, more often fostered instincts already existing in Keats. Both possessed by nature a deep love of poetry, color and melody, and both “were given to ‘luxuriating’ somewhat voluptuously over the ‘deliciousness’ of the beautiful in art, books or nature.”[99]At the very beginning of their acquaintance, notwithstanding a disparity in age of eleven years, they were wonderfully drawn to each other. Spenser was their favorite poet. Both had a great love for Chaucer, for Oriental fable and for Chivalric romance, and an unusual knowledge of Greek myth. But even at the height of their intimacy, the friendship seems to have remained more intellectual than personal, a fact due no doubt to Keats’s reserve and Hunt’s “incuriousness.”[100]Except for this drawback Hunt considered the friendship ideal. He says: “Mr. Keats and I were old friends of the old stamp, between whom there was no such thing as obligation, except the pleasure of it. He enjoyed the privilege of greatness with all whom he knew, rendering it delightful to be obliged by him, and an equal, but not a greater delight, to oblige. It was a pleasure to his friends to have him in their houses, and he did not grude it.”[101]
Through Hunt, Keats was introduced to a circle of literary men whose companionship was an important factor in his development, notably Haydon, Godwin, Hazlitt, Shelley, Vincent Novello, Horace Smith, Cornelius Webbe, Basil Montagu, the Olliers, Barry Cornwall, and later Wordsworth.
For about a year following the meeting of the two, Hunt undoubtedly exerted the strongest influence of any living man over the young poet. Severn said that Keats’s introduction toHunt wrought a great change in him and “intoxicated him with an excess of enthusiasm which kept by him four or five years.”[102]Mr. Forman says that “Charles Cowden Clarke, as his early mentor, Leigh Hunt and Haydon as his most powerful encouragers at the important epoch of adolescence, must be credited with much of the active influence that took Keats out of the path to a medical practitioner’s life, and set his feet in the devious paths of literature.”[103]Keats’s interest in his profession had decreased as his knowledge and love of poetry grew. With the publication of hisPoemsin 1817, and his retirement in April of that year from London to the Isle of Wight “to be alone and improve” himself and to continueEndymion, his decision was finally made in favor of a literary life. Hunt’s aid at this time took the practical form of publishing Keats’s poems inThe Examinerand of drawing the attention of the public to them by comments and reviews. Whether he ever paid Keats for any of his contributions to his periodicals is not known.[104]Through the influence of Hunt the Ollier brothers were induced to undertake the publication of Keats’s first volume of poems. It is dedicated to Leigh Hunt in the sonnetGlory and loveliness have passed away. The sestet refers directly to him:
“But there are left delights as high as these,And I shall ever bless my destiny,That in a time, when under pleasant treesPan is no longer sought, I feel a freeA leafy luxury, seeing I could pleaseWith these poor offerings, a man like thee.”[105]
Hunt replied in the sonnetTo John Keats, quoted here in full because of its inacessibility:
“’Tis well you think me truly one of those,Whose sense discerns the loveliness of things;For surely as I feel the bird that singsBehind the leaves, or dawn as it up grows,Or the rich bee rejoicing as he goes,Or the glad issue of emerging springs,Or overhead the glide of a dove’s wings,Or turf, or trees, or midst of all, repose.And surely as I feel things lovelier still,The human look, and the harmonious formContaining woman, and the smile in ill,And such a heart as Charles’s wise and warm,—As surely as all this, I see ev’n now,Young Keats, a flowering laurel on your brow.”[106]
In 1820, Hunt dedicated his translation of Tasso’sAmintato Keats.
In spite of a eulogistic article by Hunt running inThe Examinersof June 1, July 6 and 13, 1817, and other notices in some of the provincial papers, thePoemssold not very well at first, and later, not at all.[107]Praise from the editor ofThe Examiner, although offered with the kindest intentions in the world, was about the worst thing that could possibly have happened to Keats, for, politically and poetically, Leigh Hunt was most unpopular at this time;[108]and it was noised abroad that Keats too was a radical in politics and in religion, a disciple of the apostate in his attack on the established and accepted creed of poetry. As a matter of fact, Keats’s interest in politics decreased as his knowledge of poetry increased, although, “as a party-badge and sign of ultra-liberalism,” he, like Hunt, Byron and Shelley continued to wear the soft turn-down collars in contrast to the stiff collars and enormous cravats of the time.[109]In religion Keats vented his dislike of sect and creed on the Kirk of Scotland, as Hunt had on the Methodists. His “simply-sensuous Beauty-worship” Palgrave attributes to the “moral laxity” of Hunt.[110]Unless Palgrave, like Haydon, refers to Hunt’s unorthodoxy in matters of church and state, it is difficult to understand on what evidencehe bases this statement; in the first place, a charge of moral laxity is not borne out by the recorded facts of Hunt’s life, but only by such untrustworthy tradition as still lingers in the public mind from the Cockney School articles ofBlackwood’sand theQuarterly. Carlyle said that he was of “most exemplary private deportment.”[111]Byron, Shelley and Lamb testified to his virtuous life. In the second place, a close comparison of the works of the two now leads one to conclude that “simply-sensuous Beauty-worship” existed to a much higher degree in Keats than in Hunt, and that so strong an innate tendency would have developed without outward stimulus from any one. While both men sought the good and worshipped the beautiful, Keats, unlike Hunt, recognized somewhat “the burthen and the mystery” of human life.
Keats, during his stay in the Isle of Wight and a visit to Oxford with Bailey in the spring and summer of 1817, worked onEndymion, finishing it in the fall. The letters exchanged between him and Hunt during his absence were friendly, but a feeling of coolness began before his return. In a letter from Margate May 10, 1817, there is a curiously obscure reference to theNymphs:
“How have you got on among them? How are theNymphs? I suppose they have led you a fine dance. Where are you now?—in Judea, Cappadocia, or the parts of Lybia about Cyrene? Stranger from ‘Heaven, Hues, and Prototypes’ I wager you have given several new turns to the old saying, ‘Now the maid was fair and pleasant to look on,’ as well as made a little variation in ‘Once upon a time.’ Perhaps, too, you have rather varied, ‘Here endeth the first lesson.’ Thus I hope you have made a horseshoe business of ‘unsuperfluous life,’ ‘faint bowers’ and fibrous roots.”[112]
“How have you got on among them? How are theNymphs? I suppose they have led you a fine dance. Where are you now?—in Judea, Cappadocia, or the parts of Lybia about Cyrene? Stranger from ‘Heaven, Hues, and Prototypes’ I wager you have given several new turns to the old saying, ‘Now the maid was fair and pleasant to look on,’ as well as made a little variation in ‘Once upon a time.’ Perhaps, too, you have rather varied, ‘Here endeth the first lesson.’ Thus I hope you have made a horseshoe business of ‘unsuperfluous life,’ ‘faint bowers’ and fibrous roots.”[112]
A letter written by Haydon to Keats, dated May 11, 1817, warned Keats against Hunt, and, with others of its kind, was possibly the insidious beginning of the coolness which followed: “Beware, for God’s sake of the delusions and sophistications that are ripping up the talents and morality of our friend! He will go out of the world the victim of his own weakness and the dupe of his own self-delusions, with the contempt of hisenemies and the sorrow of his friends, and the cause he undertook to support injured by his own neglect of character.”[113]Aletter in reply from Keats, written the day after he wrote the passage about theNymphs, accounts for its dissembling tone:
“I wrote to Hunt yesterday—scarcely know what I said in it. I could not talk about Poetry in the way I should have liked for I was not in humour with either his or mine. His self delusions are very lamentable—they have inticed him into a Situation which I should be less eager after than that of a galley Slave,—what you observe thereon is very true must be in time [sic].Perhaps it is a self delusion to say so—but I think I could not be deceived in the manner that Hunt is—may I die to-morrow if I am to be. There is no greater Sin after the seven deadly than to flatter oneself into the idea of being a great Poet....”[114]
“I wrote to Hunt yesterday—scarcely know what I said in it. I could not talk about Poetry in the way I should have liked for I was not in humour with either his or mine. His self delusions are very lamentable—they have inticed him into a Situation which I should be less eager after than that of a galley Slave,—what you observe thereon is very true must be in time [sic].
Perhaps it is a self delusion to say so—but I think I could not be deceived in the manner that Hunt is—may I die to-morrow if I am to be. There is no greater Sin after the seven deadly than to flatter oneself into the idea of being a great Poet....”[114]
To judge from the testimony of his brother George it is not surprising that Keats succumbed to Haydon’s influence against Hunt: “his nervous, morbid temperament led him to misconstrue the motives of his best friends.”[115]In the last days of his life, his suspicion and bitterness were general. In a letter to Bailey, June, 1818, Keats says: “I have suspected everybody.”[116]January, 1820, he wrote Georgiana Keats, “Upon the whole I dislike mankind.”[117]Haydon may have sincerely believed Hunt’s influence to be injurious because of the latter’s unorthodoxy in matters of religion. He wrote that Keats “could not bring his mind to bear on one object, and was at the mercy of every petty theory that Leigh Hunt’s ingenuity would suggest.... He had a tendency to religion when I first knew him, but Leigh Hunt soon forced it from his mind.... Leigh Hunt was the unhinger of his best dispositions. Latterly, Keats saw Leigh Hunt’s weaknesses. I distrusted his leader, but Keats would not cease to visit him, because he thought Hunt ill-used. Thisshows Keats’s goodness of heart.”[118]It is not to be regretted that Haydon lessened Keats’s estimate of Hunt’s literary infallibility, for his influence was most injurious in that direction; but it is to be regretted that he impugned a friendship in which Hunt was certainly sincere and by which Keats had benefited.
In September, just before Keats’s return, he seems somewhat mollified and writes to John Hamilton Reynolds of Leigh Hunt’s pleasant companionship; he has failings, “but then his make-ups are very good.”[119]
On his return to Hampstead in October, 1817, Keats found affairs among the circle in a very bad way.[120]