As early as 1818, when Shelley and Byron met in Venice, the matter of the journal was discussed between them and broached to Hunt. December 22, 1818, Shelley wrote him that Byron wished him to come to Italy and that, if money considerations prevented, Byron would lend him £400 or £500. He added that Hunt should not feel uncomfortable in accepting the offer, as it was frankly made, and that his society would give Byron pleasure and service.[244]Hunt does not seem to have seriously considered the proposition, for there are few references to it in his correspondence of this year. On the renewal of the plan in 1821, Shelley would never have called on Byron for assistance for Hunt if he himself could have provided otherwise, for his opinion of Byron had changed in the meantime.[245]January 25, 1822, Shelley sent £150 for the expenses of the voyage, “within 30 or 40 pounds of what I have contrived to scrapetogether”;[246]and again on February 23, £250,[247]borrowed with security from Byron. Yet Shelley’s own exchequer at the time was so low that Mary Shelley wrote in the spring: “We are drearily behindhand with money at present. Hunt and our furniture has swallowed up more than our savings.”[248]On April 10 Shelley stated that he was trying to finishCharles the Firstin order that he might earn £100 for Hunt.
In round numbers it may be calculated that the sum total of Hunt’s indebtedness, exclusive of the yearly bequest of £120 paid by Shelley’s son, was about £2,500, a very large sum in the light of Shelley’s limited resources and other obligations. But it was as ungrudgingly given as it was graciously received. Between the two men there was no distinction ofmeumandtuum. More remarkable still, Mary Shelley gave as willingly as her husband. If one is inclined to marvel at such an unusual state of affairs, it must be recalled that both men were under the spell of William Godwin’s theories of community of property. Shelley gave as his duty and Hunt received as his due. That the effort involved much deprivation and distress of mind on the part of the giver mars the justice of acceptance by the recipient, retrieved only in part by the belief that Hunt probably did not know the full extent of Shelley’s sacrifice, and the knowledge that the former would gladly have endured as much if the conditions had been reversed. The element of self-sacrifice and delicacy on the part of Shelley in concealing it, in after years only added to the beauty of the gift in Hunt’s eyes, and even at the time he cannot be accused of indifference.[249]Jeaffreson makes the absurd suggestion that Shelleygave the money as a bribe to the editor of a powerful and flourishing literary journal.[250]He thinks dodging creditors was a strong bond of mutual interest between the two men. There is evidence that Hunt was in difficulty at the time and that Shelley left a surgeon’s bill unpaid,[251]but there is no proof extant of deliberate mutual protection. On the contrary, it is most unlikely.
The Hunts sailed from England in November, 1821, and reached Leghorn nearly nine months after first setting out on a voyage which, in its delays and dangers, Byron compared to the “periplus of Hanno the Carthaginian, and with much the same speed”;[252]Peacock to that of Ulysses.[253]Of Shelley’s suggestion to make the trip by sea, Hunt wrote: “if he had recommended a balloon, I should have been inclined to try it.”[254]Hogg, with his characteristic humour, remarked that a journey by land would have taken equally long, since Hunt would have stopped to gather all the daisies by the wayside from Paris to Pisa. Both men looked forward to many years together[255]and Shelley, in his letter of welcome, wrote that wind and waves parted them no more,[256]an assertion which now sounds like a knell of doom. From Leghorn Shelley conveyed the party to Pisa and installed them in the lower floor of Byron’s dwelling, the Lanfranchi Palace.[257]To Shelley fell the difficult task of keeping Lord Byron in heart for the new undertaking and of reviving Hunt’s drooping spirits. Hunt’s funds were all gone and in their place was a debt of sixty crowns. The next few days were full of grave anxiety and foreboding for the future, broken only by a delightful Sunday spent in seeing the Cathedral and the Tower. Of this day Hunt wrote: “Good God! what a day was that, compared withall that have followed it! I had my friend with me, arm-in-arm, after a separation of years: he was looking better than I had ever seen him—we talked of a thousand things—we anticipated a thousand pleasures.”[258]Then came the fatal Monday with its shipwreck of many hopes—in its tragic sequel too well known to need repetition here. Hunt’s last services to his friend were his assistance rendered at the cremation and his contribution of the now famous Latin epitaph “cor cordium.”[259]
With Shelley perished Hunt’s chief hope in life; in the opinion of his son, he was never the same man again. In 1832, at his period of darkest depression, he wrote: “If you ask me how it is that I bear all this, I answer, that I love nature and books, and think well of the capabilities of human kind. I have known Shelley, I have known my mother.”[260]In 1844 he claimed as his proudest title, the “Friend of Shelley.”[261]
The first printed notice of Shelley was inThe Examinerof December 1, 1816. Therefore to Hunt belongs in this case, as in that of Keats, the credit of discovery. It is difficult to account for Hunt’s tardiness of recognition,[262]coming as it did six years after Shelley first wrote him, five years after the Finnerty poem, three years afterQueen Mab, and two years after the visit in prison.[263]Also Shelley had sent contributions toThe Examiner, which Hunt had not accepted, but which he vaguely recalled at the time of writing his first review on Shelley. It was inspired by the announcement ofAlastor, and consisted of about ten lines, embodied in the article on Keats and Reynolds already referred to. Hunt pronounced Shelley “a very striking and original thinker.” Shelley’s reply to a letter from Hunt, telling him of the notice, pictures him anxiously scouring the countryside about Bath for the sight of a copy and buoyed up at last by the news of one five miles distant.
This notice was followed by the publication of theHymn to Intellectual BeautyinThe Examinerof January 19, 1817; a notice of the Chancery suit, January 26 and February 2; and an extract fromLaon and Cythna, November 30. A review of theRevolt of Islamran through three numbers, January 25, February 8 and 22, 1818. Shelley’s system of charity and his crusade against tyranny, as set forth in the preface, Hunt loudly applauded. Many extracts were italicized for the guidance of the public. The beauties of the poem were pronounced to be its mysticism, its wildness, its depth of sentiment, its grandeur of imagery, and its varied and sweet versification. In the boldness of speculation and in the love of virtue Hunt saw a resemblance to Lucretius, while in the gloom and imagination of certain passages, particularly in the grandeur of the supernatural architecture, he was reminded of Dante. The defects were pronounced to be obscurity of narrative and sameness of image and metaphor. The review closed with the prophecy “we have no doubt he is destined to be one of the leading spirits of the age.”
TheQuarterly Reviewof May, 1818, accused Shelley[264]of atheism and of dissolute conduct in private life; the same journal of April, 1819, reviewing theRevolt of Islamon the basis of the suppressed version ofLaon and Cythna, though it did not fail to appreciate the genius and beauty of the poem, charged Shelley with a predilection for incest and with a frantic dislike for Christianity. It called the support ofThe Examiner“the sweet undersong of the weekly journal.”[265]The two attacks were met by a strong protest from Hunt,[266]particularly in regard to the part dealing with Shelley’s life. He denied the propriety of such discussion in public criticism and declared that he had never known Shelley to “deviate, notwithstanding his theories, even into a single action which those who differ with him might think blameable.” His life at Marlow was described as spent in “beautiful charity and generosity” and was likened to that of Plato. In 1821 an attack on Shelley by Hazlitt was met by an angry warning from Hunt and a threat to become his public enemy, if the offense were repeated.[267]Hunt’s reason for taking this defensive attitude was that he knew that Shelley suffered greatly from such malignant exploitations and that he would not defend himself; therefore he made his friend’s cause his own and wrote: “I reckon upon your leaving your personal battles to me,”[268]much in the same manner as Shelley had assumed his money troubles.
Following the review of theRevolt of Islam, a notice ofRosalind and Helenand ofLines Written among the Euganean Hills[269]appeared inThe Examinerof May 9, 1819. Attention was called to the poet’s optimism and to his great love of nature: “the beauty of the external world has an answering heart, and the very whispers of the wind a meaning.”The Cenci, published in 1820, contained in its dedication a glowing tribute to Hunt, an honour in Shelley’s opinion only in a small degree worthy of his friend.[270]Hunt was intoxicated with the honour and wrote: “I feel as if you had bound, not only my head, but my very soul and body with laurels.”[271]On the subject of the tragedy he was equally enthusiastic: “What a noble book, Shelley, have you given us! What a true, stately, and yet affectionate mixture of poetry, philosophy, and human nature, horror, and all redeeming sweetness of intention, for there is an undersong of suggestion through it all, that sings, as it were, after the storm is over, like a brook in April.”[272]In a public expression of his opinion inThe Examinerof March 19, 1820, Hunt pronouncedThe Cencithe greatest dramatic production of the day. Writing of the drama again in the same journal of July 19 and 26, 1820, he called Shelley “a framer of mighty lines” and continued: “Majesty and Love do sit on one throne in the lofty buildings of his poetry; and they will be found there, at a late and we trust a happier day, on a seat immortal as themselves.”
One of Hunt’s most perfect poems,Jaffár, is inscribed to the memory of Shelley. The praise ofJaffárand his friend’s undying loyalty immediately suggest to the reader that Huntmay have been celebrating his own and Shelley’s friendship. The last review to appear during Shelley’s lifetime by Hunt was that ofPrometheus Unboundin three numbers ofThe Examinerof 1822. A projected review ofAdonaisalluded to in a letter of Hunt’s does not seem to have seen the light of publication, but a reference in a letter at the time is worth noting: “It is the most Delphic poety I have seen in a long while: full of those embodyings of the most subtle and airy imaginations,—those arrestings and explanations of the most shadowy yearnings of our being.”[273]The well-known account of Shelley’s rescue of a woman on Hampstead Heath was told inThe Literary Examinerof August 23, 1823.[274]The same magazine of September 20 of the same year[275]contained the followingSonnet to Percy Shelley, given here because of its general inaccessibility:
“Hast thou from earth, then, really passed away,And mingled with the shadowy mass of thingsWhich were, but are not? Will thy harp’s dear stringsNo more yield music to the rapid playOf thy swift thoughts, now turned thou art to clay?Hark! Is that rushing of thy spirit’s wings,When (like the skylark, who in mounting sings)Soaring through high imagination’s way,Thou pour’dst thy melody upon the earth,Silent for ever? Yes, wild ocean’s waveHath o’er thee rolled. But whilst within the graveThou sleepst, let me in the love of thy pure worthOne thing foretell,—that thy great fame shall beProgressive as Time’s flood, eternal as the sea!”
InLord Byron and Some of His Contemporariesappeared the first biographical memoir of Shelley, a sketch of some seventy pages.[276]It shows great appreciation of the fine andgentle qualities of his rare genius and defends some of the weak points of his career. The description of his personal appearance, of the life at Marlowe, and the few anecdotes are often quoted. But on the whole, it lacks the bold strokes of vivid portraiture and it is very disappointing.[277]There was probably no one, with the exception of his wife, who knew Shelley so well as Hunt and who was, therefore, in a position to give as complete and intimate an idea of him. It was Mrs. Shelley’s wish that Hunt should be her husband’s biographer, for she thought that he, “perhaps above all others, understood his nature and his genius.”[278]Hunt, inThe Spectatorof August 13, 1859, gave as his reason for not writing Shelley’s life that he “could not survive enough persons.” But it is to be questioned if he were fitted for the task. His son did not think that he was because of his attention to details and his irresistible tendency to analysis: “a mind, in short, like that of Hamlet, cultivated rather than corrected by the trials of life, was scarcely suited to comprehend the strong instincts, indomitable will, and complete unity of idea which distinguished Shelley.”[279]
In theTatlerof August 1, 1831, Hunt wrote that “Mr. Shelley was a platonic philosopher, of the acutest and loftiest kind,” and that he belonged to the school of Plato and Æschylus, as Keats belonged to that of Spenser and Milton. FollowingThe Tatlerwas the preface toThe Mask of Anarchy,[280]published in 1832, originally designed forThe Examinerin 1819, but laid aside by the editor because he thought the public not discerning enough “to do justice to the sincerity and kindheartedness of the spirit that walked in this flaming robe of verse.” The preface eulogizes the poet’s spiritual nature and his “seraphic purpose of good.” InThe Seer, 1841, Shelley’s qualities of heart were pronounced more enduring than his genius.[281]
Imagination and Fancycontained an essay and selections from his poems. Here Hunt makes the curious statement that little in the poems is purely poetical, but rather moral, political, and speculative. It is noteworthy that he predicts, probably for the first time, that, had Shelley lived, he would have been the greatest dramatic writer since the days of Elizabeth, if not, indeed, actually so, through what he did accomplish; a statement often repeated. He says: “If Coleridge is the sweetest of our poets, Shelley is at once the most ethereal and gorgeous, the one who has clothed his thought in draperies of the most evanescent and most magnificent words and imagery.... Shelley ... might well call himself Ariel.”[282]In connection with Shelley’s ethereal qualities, Mrs. James T. Fields quotes Hunt as having said on another occasion that Shelley always seemed to him as if he were “just alit from the planet Mercury, bearing a winged wand tipped with flame.”[283]InImagination and Fancy, Hunt continues: “Not Milton himself is more learned in Grecisms, or nicer in entomological propriety; and nobody, throughout, has a style so Orphic and primeval.”
It is a touching circumstance that Hunt’s last letter bore reference to Shelley, and that his last effort as a public writer, made only a few days before his death, was in vindication of Shelley’s character.[284]The publication of theShelley Memorials, 1859, in which Hunt had a part, provoked an unfavorable review inThe Spectator. Hunt replied in the next number[285]of the same paper. In particular he asserted Shelley’s truthfulness, which had been assailed in respect to his story of the attempted assassination in Wales. He held that Shelley was not a man to be judged by ordinary rules, but that he was the highest possible exponent of humanity—an approach to divinity.
Hunt’s literary relation with Shelley falls into two divisions; publications written for Hunt’s periodicals, and received by Huntin order to give Shelley an outlet of expression denied him in the more conservative papers; and second, positive literary imitation. Besides the poems quoted in Hunt’s criticisms of Shelley, the first includes a review of Godwin’sMandeville,[286]a letter of protest regarding the second edition ofQueen Mab,[287]Marianne’s Dream,[288]Song on a Faded Violet,[289]The Sunset,[290]The Question,[291]Good Night,[292]Sonnet, Ye Hasten to the Grave,[293]To —— (Lines to a Reviewer),[294]November, 1815,[295]Love’s Philosophy,[296]and the contributions designed by Shelley forThe Liberaland published after his death.[297]Productions which were written for Hunt’s papers, but were not accepted, werePeter Bell the Third,The Mask of Anarchy,Julian and Maddalo, a letter on the persecution of Richard Carlile,[298]letters on Italy, and a review of Peacock’sRhododaphne. Hunt’s failure to accept what was sent him greatly discouraged Shelley at times: “Mine is a life of failures; Peacock says my poetry is composed of day dreams and nightmares, and Leigh Hunt does not think it good enough forThe Examiner.”
On a Fete at Carlton House, an attack on the Prince Regent, though perhaps directly inspired by the account in the dailies of the ball at Carlton House on June 20, 1811, was doubtless influenced by the continued attacks ofThe Examiner. As there are extant only two or three lines of the poem,[299]it isimpossible to judge of the extent of the influence, but in Shelley’s letters to Hogg and to Edward Graham describing the poem, there is resemblance in tone and epithet toThe Examiner. A letter from Shelley to Lord Ellenborough on the occasion of Eaton’s sentence for publishing the third part of Paine’sAge of Reasonfollowed a long series of articles by Hunt on the prerogative of liberty of speech.[300]
A meeting of Reformers at Manchester on the sixteenth of August, 1819, for the purpose of discussing quietly the annual meeting of Parliament, universal suffrage, and voting by ballot, was dispersed by military force. Articles setting forth the long sufferings of the Reformers, charging the authorities with wanton bloodshed, and ridiculing the absurd trial of the offenders, appeared inThe Examinerof August 22, 29, September 5, 19 and 26.The Mask of Anarchy, written on the occasion of the massacre at Manchester, was sent to Leigh Hunt for publication sometime before the first of November, 1819. The sentiment of both men is the same regarding the affair.
Accounts of the death of the Princess Charlotte and of the executions for high treason at Derby of Brandreth, Ludlam and Turner, after a horrible imprisonment, two articles inThe Examinerof November 9, 1819, inspired Shelley’sAddress to the People on the Death of the Princess Charlotte, sometimes known asWe Pity the Plumage, but Forget the Dying Bird, dated November 12 of the same year. Hunt followed with a second article,Death of the Princess Charlotte and Indecent Advantage Taken of It, November 16, 1819. Both writers called attention to the disposition of the public to forget the sufferings of the poor, while it mourned hysterically with royalty; they declared that the administration of justice and the events leading to such crimes were of much greater importance. Three articles inThe Examinerof October 17, 24 and 31, 1819, on the trial of Richard Carlile for libel, were followed by an open letter on the same case from Shelley to Hunt dated November 3, 1819. By scattered references it can be seen that Shelley fully agreed with Hunt in his opinion of the PrinceRegent and of the Ministers, in his attitude toward the corruption of the court and of the army; and in his proposed regulation of taxes and of the public debt.
Œdipus Tyrannus or Swellfoot the Tyrant, begun August, 1820, succeeded a series of articles, beginning inThe Examinerof June 11, 1820, and continuing throughout nineteen numbers,[301]on the subject of George IV’s attempt to divorce his wife.[302]Abhorrence of the king’s perfidy and of his ministers’ support, sympathy for Queen Caroline, and minor details parallel closely Hunt’s version inThe Examiner. This passage occurs in the article of June 9: “An animal sets himself down, month after month, at Milan, to watch at her doors and windows, to intercept discarded servants and others who know what a deposition might be worth, and thus to gather poison for one of those venomous Green Bags, which have so long infected and nauseated the people, and are now to infect the Queen.” This seems to be the germ of the passage in Shelley’s poem beginning:
“Behold this bag! it isThe poison Bag of that Green Spider huge,On which our spies sulked in ovation throughThe streets of Thebes, when they were paved with dead.”
Then follows the plot to throw the contents upon the Queen.
The handling of the heroic couplet, employed in theLetter to Maria Gisborneand inEpipsychidon, as well as inJulian and Maddalo,[303]has been already discussed in its relationship to Hunt’s use of the same. Shelley, in a letter to Hunt, explains his position in regard to the language ofJulian and Maddalo:
“You will find the little piece, I think, in some degree consistent with your own ideas of the manner in which poetry ought to be written. I have employed a certain familiar style of language to express the actual way inwhich people talk to each other, whom education and a certain refinement of sentiment have placed above the use of vulgar idioms. I use the wordvulgarin its most extensive sense. The vulgarity of rank and fashion is as gross, in its way, as that of poverty, and its cant terms equally expressive of base conceptions, and therefore, equally unfit for poetry. Not that the familiar style is to be admitted in the treatment of a subject wholly ideal, or in that part of any subject which relates to common life, where the passion, exceeding a certain limit, touches the boundary of that which is ideal. Strong passion expresses itself in metaphor, borrowed alike from subjects remote or near, and casts over all the shadow of its own greatness.”[304]
“You will find the little piece, I think, in some degree consistent with your own ideas of the manner in which poetry ought to be written. I have employed a certain familiar style of language to express the actual way inwhich people talk to each other, whom education and a certain refinement of sentiment have placed above the use of vulgar idioms. I use the wordvulgarin its most extensive sense. The vulgarity of rank and fashion is as gross, in its way, as that of poverty, and its cant terms equally expressive of base conceptions, and therefore, equally unfit for poetry. Not that the familiar style is to be admitted in the treatment of a subject wholly ideal, or in that part of any subject which relates to common life, where the passion, exceeding a certain limit, touches the boundary of that which is ideal. Strong passion expresses itself in metaphor, borrowed alike from subjects remote or near, and casts over all the shadow of its own greatness.”[304]
Rosalind and Helen, theLetter to Maria Gisborne,Swellfoot the Tyrant, andPeter Bell the Third[305]show a similar influence.The Letter to Maria Gisbornebears a resemblance to Hunt’s epistolary style, and was written, Mr. Forman thinks, for circulation in the Hunt circle only.[306]It was through Hunt, so Shelley states in the dedication, that he knew thePeter Bellsof Wordsworth and of John Hamilton Reynolds. Shelley’s qualified adoption in these poems of Hunt’s theory of poetic language is seen in the choice of a vocabulary in dialogue nearer everyday usage than the more remote one of his other poems. Yet the result does not bear any great resemblance to Hunt. Shelley’s unvarying refinement and sensibility kept him from committing the same errors of taste, but his work suffered rather than gained by an innovation which was probably a concession to his friendship for Hunt and not a strong conviction. With the exception of the descriptive passages, the keynote of these poems is on a lower poetic pitch.
On subjects of Italian art and literature the friends held much the same opinion. At times Shelley seems to have been led by Hunt’s judgment, as in his conclusions regarding Raphaeland Michaelangelo.[307]One passage on the Italian poets indicates a possible borrowing of thought and figure on Shelley’s part when he wrote of Boccaccio that he was superior to Ariosto and to Tasso, “the children of a later and colder day.... How much do I admire Boccaccio! What descriptions of nature are those in his little introduction to every new day! It is the morning of life stripped of that mist of familiarity which makes it obscure to us.”[308]Hunt wrote: “Petrarch, Boccaccio and Dante are the morning, noon and night of the great Italian day.”[309]
Poems which refer directly to Hunt are the fourteen lines in theLetter to Maria Gisborne;[310]possibly the fragment, beginning, “For me, my friend, if not that tears did tremble.”[311]A cancelled passage of theAdonaisdescribes Hunt thus:
And then came one of sweet and carnal looks,Those soft smiles to his dark and night-like eyesWere as the clear and ever-living brooksAre to the obscure fountains whence they rise,Showing how pure they are; a ParadiseOf happy truth upon his forehead lowLay, making wisdom lovely, in the guiseOf earth-awakening morn upon the browOf star-deserted heaven, while ocean gleams below,······His song, though very sweet, was low and faint,A single strain—[312]
The thirty-fifth strophe of the present version refers to Hunt.
Shelley’s last letter had reference to Hunt.[313]His last literary effort was a poem comparing Hunt to a firefly and welcoming him to Italy, just as Hunt’s last letter and last public utterance bore reference to Shelley—strange coincidence, but striking testimony to their mutual devotion. An instance of Shelley’s overestimation of Hunt’s ability is seen in a passage where he says that Hunt excels in tragedy in the power of delineating passion and, what is more necessary, of connecting and developing it, “the last an incredible effort for himself but easy for Hunt.”[314]He greatly valued and trusted Hunt’s affection, at times calling him his best[315]and his only friend.[316]If the tender solicitude and veneration of a beautiful spirit for a man of vastly inferior abilities seems strange, it is but a witness to the humility of true genius.
Byron’s Politics and Religion—His sympathy with Hunt in prison—His impression of the man—Hunt’s Defense of Byron and Criticism of his works—The Liberal—Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries.
It is not strange that Lord Byron, son of an English father and a Scotch mother, born of a long line of adventurous and warlike sailors and illustrious and loyal knights, with a strain of royalty and madness on one side and eccentricity and immorality on the other, should have fallen heir in an unusual degree to a nature whose virtues and vices were complex and contradictory. Its singularities are nowhere more apparent than in the mutations of his friendships.
Prior to his acquaintance with Hunt, Byron had taken his seat in the House of Lords and had made speeches against the framebreakers of Nottingham and in behalf of Catholic emancipation. A month after their meeting he made a third speech introducing Major Cartwright’s petition for reform in Parliament. The second and third of these measures, in particular, were warmly advocated byThe Examiner, with which paper Byron was familiar, as references in his letters show. It is therefore not hazardous to surmise that his sympathy with liberal policies, alien to his Tory blood and aristocratic spirit, was due, in part at least, to this influence. Byron’s political principles on the whole were as evanescent and intermittent as a will-o’-the-wisp.[317]His chief tenets were the assertion of the individual; antagonism against all authority; a striving afterfreedom. Brandes, Elze and Treitscke agree in attributing his political enthusiasm to the intense passion of his nature rather than to his moral convictions.[318]His religious convictions were as fugitive as his political and, like those of Hunt and other advanced thinkers of the age, seem to have been without deference to any existing creed or dogma. At his gloomiest moments he confessed that he denied nothing but doubted everything. Hunt says of Byron’s religion that he “did not know what he was.... He was a Christian by education, he was an infidel by reading. He was a Christian by habit, but he was no Christian upon reflection.”[319]The phrase, “I am of the opposition” applies to his religion as well as to his politics, as indeed it serves as the key-note to almost every action of his life.
Leigh Hunt has given a characteristic account of his first sight of Byron “rehearsing the part of Leander,” in the River Thames sometime before he went to Greece in 1809:
“I saw nothing in Lord Byron at that time, but a young man, who, like myself, had written a bad volume of poems; and though I had sympathy with him on this account, and more respect for his rank than I was willing to suppose, my sympathy was not an agreeable one; so, contenting myself with seeing his lordship’s head bob up and down in the water, like a buoy, I came away. Lord Byron when he afterwards came to see me in prison, was pleased to regret that I had not stayed. He told me, that the sight of my volume at Harrow had been one of his incentives to write verses, and that he had had the same passion for friendship which I had displayed in it. To my astonishment he quoted some of the lines, and would not hear me speak ill of them.”[320]
“I saw nothing in Lord Byron at that time, but a young man, who, like myself, had written a bad volume of poems; and though I had sympathy with him on this account, and more respect for his rank than I was willing to suppose, my sympathy was not an agreeable one; so, contenting myself with seeing his lordship’s head bob up and down in the water, like a buoy, I came away. Lord Byron when he afterwards came to see me in prison, was pleased to regret that I had not stayed. He told me, that the sight of my volume at Harrow had been one of his incentives to write verses, and that he had had the same passion for friendship which I had displayed in it. To my astonishment he quoted some of the lines, and would not hear me speak ill of them.”[320]
Hunt’sJuvenilia, beyond having served as one of the incentives to the writing of Byron’sHours of Idleness, does not seem to have affected it. For Hunt’s undercurrent of friendship and cheerfulness were substituted Byron’s prevailing notes of amorousness and melancholy.
The actual acquaintance of the two men did not begin until 1813, when Thomas Moore, since 1811 a staunch admirer of Hunt’s political courage and of his literary talent, and one of the visitors welcomed to Surrey Gaol, mentioned thecircumstances of his imprisonment to Lord Byron, likewise a sympathizer with the attitude ofThe Examinertowards the Prince Regent. Mr. Cordy Jeaffreson[321]thinks that it was this reckless sympathy with the libeller of the Prince Regent that led Byron to reprint withThe Corsair, eight lines addressed in 1812 to the Princess Charlotte,Weep, daughter of a Royal Line. The retaliation of one of the Tory papers goaded Byron to write in return an article which strongly resembles Hunt’s famous libel[322]on the Prince Regent. Byron expressed a wish to call on Hunt with Moore, and a visitfollowedon May 20, 1813.[323]Five days later Hunt wrote:
“I have had Lord B. here again. He came on Sunday, by himself, in a very frank, unceremonious manner, and knowing what I wanted for my poem [Story of Rimini] brought me the last newTravels in Italyin two quarto volumes, of which he requests my acceptance, with the air of one who did not seem to think himself conferring the least obligation. This will please you. It strikes me that he and I shall becomefriends, literally and cordially speaking: there is something in the texture of his mind and feelings that seems to resemble mine to a thread; I think we are cut out of the same piece, only a little different wear may have altered our respective naps a little.”[324]
“I have had Lord B. here again. He came on Sunday, by himself, in a very frank, unceremonious manner, and knowing what I wanted for my poem [Story of Rimini] brought me the last newTravels in Italyin two quarto volumes, of which he requests my acceptance, with the air of one who did not seem to think himself conferring the least obligation. This will please you. It strikes me that he and I shall becomefriends, literally and cordially speaking: there is something in the texture of his mind and feelings that seems to resemble mine to a thread; I think we are cut out of the same piece, only a little different wear may have altered our respective naps a little.”[324]
With the pride of a sycophant in the presence of a lord Hunt relates that Byron would not let the footman carry the books but gave “you to understand that he was prouder of being a friend and a man of letters than a lord. It was thus by flattering one’s vanity he persuaded us of his own freedom from it: for he could see very well, that I had more value for lords than I supposed.”[325]In June of the same year Hunt invited Byron, Moore and Mitchell to dine with him in prison. Among several others who came in during the evening was Mr. John Scott, later a severe critic of Byron inThe Champion.[326]Many years after Moore, in hisLife of Byron, wrote of the gathering with venom, recalling Scott as an assailant of Byron’s“living fame, while another [Hunt] less manful, would reserve the cool venom for his grave.”[327]
Byron esteemed Hunt greatly during the first year of their acquaintance. His advances show a desire for intimacy which goes far toward contradicting the statements sometimes made that the overtures were on Hunt’s side only.[328]Byron expressed himself thus at the time:
“Hunt is an extraordinary character and not exactly of the present age. He reminds me more of the Pym and Hampden times—much talent, great independence of spirit, and an austere, yet not repulsive, aspect. If he goes onqualis ab incepto, I know few men who will deserve more praise or obtain it. I must go and see him again—a rapid succession of adventures since last summer, added to some serious uneasiness and business, have interrupted our acquaintance; but he is a man worth knowing; and though for his own sake, I wish him out of prison, I like to study character in such situations. He has been unshaken and will continue so. I don’t think him deeply versed in life:—he is the bigot of virtue (not religion) and enamoured of the beauty of that ‘empty name,’ as the last breath of Brutus pronounced and every day proves it. He is perhaps, a little opinionated, as all men who are thecenter of circles, wide or narrow—the Sir Oracles—in whose name two or three are gathered together—must be, and as even Johnson was: but withal, a valuable man, and less vain than success and even the consciousness of preferring ‘the right to the expedient,’ might excuse.”
“Hunt is an extraordinary character and not exactly of the present age. He reminds me more of the Pym and Hampden times—much talent, great independence of spirit, and an austere, yet not repulsive, aspect. If he goes onqualis ab incepto, I know few men who will deserve more praise or obtain it. I must go and see him again—a rapid succession of adventures since last summer, added to some serious uneasiness and business, have interrupted our acquaintance; but he is a man worth knowing; and though for his own sake, I wish him out of prison, I like to study character in such situations. He has been unshaken and will continue so. I don’t think him deeply versed in life:—he is the bigot of virtue (not religion) and enamoured of the beauty of that ‘empty name,’ as the last breath of Brutus pronounced and every day proves it. He is perhaps, a little opinionated, as all men who are thecenter of circles, wide or narrow—the Sir Oracles—in whose name two or three are gathered together—must be, and as even Johnson was: but withal, a valuable man, and less vain than success and even the consciousness of preferring ‘the right to the expedient,’ might excuse.”
December 2, 1813, he wrote to Hunt: “It is my wish that our acquaintance, or, if you please to accept it, friendship, may be permanent.... I have a thorough esteem for that independence of spirit which you have maintained with sterling talent, and at the expense of some suffering.”[329]Cordial intercourse between the two men continued after Hunt’s removal from Surrey Gaol to lodgings in Edgeware Road, where Byron became one of his most frequent visitors and correspondents. In the Hunt household Byron laid aside his ordinary reserve. There are records of his riding the children’s rocking horse; of presents of game; loans of books; letters presented from a Paris correspondent forThe Examiner; and gifts of boxes and tickets for Drury Lane Theatre, of which he was one of themanagers. This last Hunt would not accept for fear of sacrificing his critical independence. InLord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries, Hunt claims that this familiarity proceeded from an “instinct of immeasureable distance.”[330]
It was not until Byron’s matrimonial difficulties in 1816 that Hunt, inert and depressed from his long confinement, bestirred himself to return a single one of the calls. Byron’s separation from his wife in 1816 and the subsequent scandal aroused in Hunt that instinctive protection and active loyalty for friends abused, already discussed in a review of his relations with Keats and Shelley. The conjugal troubles and libertinism of the Prince Regent had brought forth only scorn and vituperation from the editor ofThe Examiner, but difficulties of equal notoriety at closer range in the lives of his friends evoked only sympathy and protection. He asserted that there was no positive knowledge as to the cause of the trouble and much depraved speculation, envy and falsehood, yet “had he [Byron] been as the scandal-mongers represented him, we should nevertheless, if we thought our arm worth his using, have stood by him in his misfortunes to the last.”[331]A prophecy of a near reconciliation and a too-gushing picture of renewed domesticity are somewhat grotesque in the light of later events. For this defense Byron was very grateful. January 12, 1822, he wrote that Scott, Jeffrey and Leigh Hunt “were the only literary men of numbers whom I know (and some of whom I have served,) who dared venture even an anonymous word in my favour, just then ... the third was under no kind of obligation to me.”[332]Hunt’s opinion in the matter underwent a transformation after the fateful Italian visit; he then declared that Byron wooed with genius, married for money, and strove for a reconciliation because of pique.[333]
TheStory of Rimini, which had been submitted to Byron from time to time and which was dedicated to him, appeared likewise in 1816. Byron seems to have accepted the familiar tone of the inscription at the time in all good faith “as apublic compliment and a private kindness”[334]althoughBlackwood’sof March, 1828, states, perhaps not seriously, that Byron in his copy had substituted for Hunt’s name “impudent varlet.” As late as April 11, 1817, Byron wrote from Italy that he expected to return to Venice by Ravenna and Rimini that he might take notes of the scenery for Hunt.[335]
But a letter to Moore from Venice, June 1, 1818, seems to mark a disillusionment on the part of Byron: