“I wrote nothing which I did not feel to be true, or think so. But I can say with Alamanni, that I was then a young man, and that I am now advanced in years. I can say, that I was agitated by grief and anger, and that I am now free from anger. I can say, that I was far more alive to other people’s defects than to my own, and that I am now sufficiently sensible of my own to show to others the charity which I need myself. I can say, moreover, that apart from a little allowance for provocation, I do not think it right to exhibit what is amiss, or may be thought amiss, in the character of a fellow-creature, out of any feeling but unmistakable sorrow, or the wish to lessen evils which society itself may have caused.“Lord Byron, with respect to the points on which he erred and suffered (for on all others, a man like himself, poet and wit, could not but give and receive pleasure), was the victim of a bad bringing up, of a series of false positions in society, of evils arising from the mistakes of society itself, of a personal disadvantage (which his feelings exaggerated), nay, of his very advantages of person, and of a face so handsome as to render with strong tendencies of natural affection,” and declared that his fickleness had been “nurtured by an excessively bad training.” In exoneration of Hunt he said that if “disappointment and the fervour of a new literary work—which often draws the pen beyond its original intention—led Leigh Hunt into a book that was too severe, perhaps too one-sided in its views, he himself afterwards corrected the one-sidedness, and recalled to mind the earlier and undoubtedly the more correct impression he had had of Lord Byron.” I, 202-203.him an object of admiration. Even the lameness, of which he had such a resentment, only softened the admiration with tenderness.“But he did not begin life under good influences. He had a mother, herself, in all probability, the victim of bad training, who would fling the dishes from table at his head, and tell him he would be a scoundrel like his father. His father, who was cousin to the previous lord, had been what is called a man upon town, and was neither rich nor very respectable. The young lord, whose means had not yet recovered themselves, went to school, noble but poor, expecting to be in the ascendant with his title, yet kept down by the inconsistency of his condition. He left school to put on the cap with the gold tuft, which is worshipped at college:—he left college to fall into some of the worst hands on the town:—his first productions were contemptuously criticised, and his genius was thus provoked into satire:—his next were overpraised, which increased his self-love:—he married when his temper had been soured by difficulties, and his will and pleasure pampered by the sex:—and he went companionless into a foreign country, where all this perplexity could repose without being taught better, and where the sense of a lost popularity could be drowned in license.“I am sorry I ever wrote a syllable respecting Lord Byron which might have been spared. I have still to relate my connection with him, but it will be related in a different manner. Pride, it is said, will have a fall; and I must own, that on this subject I have experienced the truth of the saying. I had prided myself—I should pride myself now if I had not been thus rebuked—on not being one of those who talk against others. I went counter to this feeling in a book; and to crown the absurdity of the contradiction, I am foolish enough to suppose that the very fact of my so doing would show that I had done it in no other instance! that having been thus public in the error, credit would be given me for never having been privately so! Such are the delusions inflicted on us by self-love. When the consequence was represented to me as characterized by my enemies, I felt, enemies though they were, as if I blushed from head to foot. It is true I had been goaded to the task by misrepresentation:—I had resisted every other species of temptation to do it:—and, after all, I said more in his excuse, and less to his disadvantage, than many of those who reproved me. But enough. I owed the acknowledgment to him and to myself; and I shall proceed on my course with a sigh for both, and I trust in the good will of the sincere.”[445]
“I wrote nothing which I did not feel to be true, or think so. But I can say with Alamanni, that I was then a young man, and that I am now advanced in years. I can say, that I was agitated by grief and anger, and that I am now free from anger. I can say, that I was far more alive to other people’s defects than to my own, and that I am now sufficiently sensible of my own to show to others the charity which I need myself. I can say, moreover, that apart from a little allowance for provocation, I do not think it right to exhibit what is amiss, or may be thought amiss, in the character of a fellow-creature, out of any feeling but unmistakable sorrow, or the wish to lessen evils which society itself may have caused.
“Lord Byron, with respect to the points on which he erred and suffered (for on all others, a man like himself, poet and wit, could not but give and receive pleasure), was the victim of a bad bringing up, of a series of false positions in society, of evils arising from the mistakes of society itself, of a personal disadvantage (which his feelings exaggerated), nay, of his very advantages of person, and of a face so handsome as to render with strong tendencies of natural affection,” and declared that his fickleness had been “nurtured by an excessively bad training.” In exoneration of Hunt he said that if “disappointment and the fervour of a new literary work—which often draws the pen beyond its original intention—led Leigh Hunt into a book that was too severe, perhaps too one-sided in its views, he himself afterwards corrected the one-sidedness, and recalled to mind the earlier and undoubtedly the more correct impression he had had of Lord Byron.” I, 202-203.
him an object of admiration. Even the lameness, of which he had such a resentment, only softened the admiration with tenderness.
“But he did not begin life under good influences. He had a mother, herself, in all probability, the victim of bad training, who would fling the dishes from table at his head, and tell him he would be a scoundrel like his father. His father, who was cousin to the previous lord, had been what is called a man upon town, and was neither rich nor very respectable. The young lord, whose means had not yet recovered themselves, went to school, noble but poor, expecting to be in the ascendant with his title, yet kept down by the inconsistency of his condition. He left school to put on the cap with the gold tuft, which is worshipped at college:—he left college to fall into some of the worst hands on the town:—his first productions were contemptuously criticised, and his genius was thus provoked into satire:—his next were overpraised, which increased his self-love:—he married when his temper had been soured by difficulties, and his will and pleasure pampered by the sex:—and he went companionless into a foreign country, where all this perplexity could repose without being taught better, and where the sense of a lost popularity could be drowned in license.
“I am sorry I ever wrote a syllable respecting Lord Byron which might have been spared. I have still to relate my connection with him, but it will be related in a different manner. Pride, it is said, will have a fall; and I must own, that on this subject I have experienced the truth of the saying. I had prided myself—I should pride myself now if I had not been thus rebuked—on not being one of those who talk against others. I went counter to this feeling in a book; and to crown the absurdity of the contradiction, I am foolish enough to suppose that the very fact of my so doing would show that I had done it in no other instance! that having been thus public in the error, credit would be given me for never having been privately so! Such are the delusions inflicted on us by self-love. When the consequence was represented to me as characterized by my enemies, I felt, enemies though they were, as if I blushed from head to foot. It is true I had been goaded to the task by misrepresentation:—I had resisted every other species of temptation to do it:—and, after all, I said more in his excuse, and less to his disadvantage, than many of those who reproved me. But enough. I owed the acknowledgment to him and to myself; and I shall proceed on my course with a sigh for both, and I trust in the good will of the sincere.”[445]
Characteristics of the “Cockney School”—Reasons for Tory enmity—Establishment ofBlackwood’s Magazineand theQuarterly Review—Their methods of attack—Other targets—Authorship of anonymous articles—Members of the Cockney group—Byron—Hunt—Keats—Shelley— Hazlitt.
The word “Cockney” says Bulwer-Lytton, signifies the “archetype of the Londoner east of Temple Bar, and is as grotesquely identified with the Bells of Bow as Quasimodo with those of Notre Dame.”[446]The epithet remains doubtful in origin but is proverbially significant of odium and of ridicule. R. H. Horne asserts that, in its first application, it meant merely “pastoral, minus nature.”[447]The word did not long carry so harmless a connotation. It was first applied to Hunt by the Tory journals in 1817 and, in the phrase “Cockney School,” was gradually extended until it included most of his associates. The group of men thus arbitrarily banded together did not form aschoolor cult, and themselves resented such a classification. They differed widely in their fundamental principles of life and art. They were not all of one vocation. On the other hand they had certain superficial points in common which made them collectively vulnerable to the dart of the enemy. They were Londoners[448]by birth or by adoption; with the exception of Shelley they may all be said to have belongedto the middle class; the most Cockneyfied of them had certain vulgar mannerisms; they egotistically paraded their personal affairs in public; they praised each other somewhat fulsomely in dedications and elsewhere, though not always to the full satisfaction of everybody concerned; they presented each other with wreaths of bay, laurel, and roses, and with locks of hair; they agreed in liking Thomas Moore and in disliking Southey; they moved with complacency within a limited circle to the exclusion of a large city; in general they were liberal in politics and in religion; they were in revolt against French criticism; they chose Elizabethan or Italian models, and, as a rule, they conceitedly ignored or contemned contemporary writers.
The gatherings of the coterie have been nowhere better described than by Cowden Clarke:
“Evenings of Mozartian operatic and chamber music at Vincent Novello’s own house, where Leigh Hunt, Shelley, Keats and the Lambs were invited guests; the brilliant supper parties at the alternate dwellings of the Novellos, the Hunts and the Lambs, who had mutually agreed that bread and cheese, with celery, and Elia’s immortalized ‘Lutheran beer’ were to be the sole cates provided; the meetings at the theatres, when Munden, Dowton, Liston, Bannister, Elliston and Fanny Kelly were on the stage; the picnic repasts enjoyed together by appointment in the fields that lay spread in green breadth and luxuriance between the west end of Oxford Street and the western slope of Hampstead Hill—are things never to be forgotten.”[449]
“Evenings of Mozartian operatic and chamber music at Vincent Novello’s own house, where Leigh Hunt, Shelley, Keats and the Lambs were invited guests; the brilliant supper parties at the alternate dwellings of the Novellos, the Hunts and the Lambs, who had mutually agreed that bread and cheese, with celery, and Elia’s immortalized ‘Lutheran beer’ were to be the sole cates provided; the meetings at the theatres, when Munden, Dowton, Liston, Bannister, Elliston and Fanny Kelly were on the stage; the picnic repasts enjoyed together by appointment in the fields that lay spread in green breadth and luxuriance between the west end of Oxford Street and the western slope of Hampstead Hill—are things never to be forgotten.”[449]
Miss Mitford relates a ludicrous incident of one of these meetings:
“Leigh Hunt (not the notorious Mr. Henry Hunt, but the fop, poet and politician of the ‘Examiner’) is a great keeper of birthdays. He was celebrating that of Haydn, the great composer—giving a dinner, crowning his bust with laurels, berhyming the poor dear German, and conducting an apotheosis in full form. Somebody told Mr. Haydon they were celebratinghisbirthday. So off he trotted to Hampstead, and bolted into the company—made a very fine animated speech—thanked him most sincerely for what they had done him and the arts in his person.”[450]
“Leigh Hunt (not the notorious Mr. Henry Hunt, but the fop, poet and politician of the ‘Examiner’) is a great keeper of birthdays. He was celebrating that of Haydn, the great composer—giving a dinner, crowning his bust with laurels, berhyming the poor dear German, and conducting an apotheosis in full form. Somebody told Mr. Haydon they were celebratinghisbirthday. So off he trotted to Hampstead, and bolted into the company—made a very fine animated speech—thanked him most sincerely for what they had done him and the arts in his person.”[450]
At one time the set became violently vegetarian. The enthusiasm came to a sudden end, as narrated by Joseph Severn:
“Leigh Hunt most eloquently discussed the charms and advantages of these vegetable banquets, depicting in glowing words the cauliflowers swimming in melted butter, and the peas and beans never profaned with animal gravy. In the midst of his rhapsody he was interrupted by the venerable Wordsworth, who begged permission to ask a question. ‘If,’ he said, ‘by chance of good luck they ever met with a caterpillar, they thanked their stars for the delicious morsel of animal food.’ This absurdity all came to an end by an ugly discovery. Haydon, whose ruddy face had kept the other enthusiasts from sinking under their scanty diet—for they clung fondly to the hope that they would become like him, although they increased daily in pallor and leanness—this Haydon was discovered one day coming out of a chop-house. He was promptly taxed with treachery, when he honestly confessed that every day after the vegetable repast he ate a good beef-steak. This fact plunged the others in despair, and Leigh Hunt assured me that on vegetable diet his constitution had received a blow from which he had never recovered. With Shelley it was different, for he was by nature formed to regard animal food repulsively.”[451]
“Leigh Hunt most eloquently discussed the charms and advantages of these vegetable banquets, depicting in glowing words the cauliflowers swimming in melted butter, and the peas and beans never profaned with animal gravy. In the midst of his rhapsody he was interrupted by the venerable Wordsworth, who begged permission to ask a question. ‘If,’ he said, ‘by chance of good luck they ever met with a caterpillar, they thanked their stars for the delicious morsel of animal food.’ This absurdity all came to an end by an ugly discovery. Haydon, whose ruddy face had kept the other enthusiasts from sinking under their scanty diet—for they clung fondly to the hope that they would become like him, although they increased daily in pallor and leanness—this Haydon was discovered one day coming out of a chop-house. He was promptly taxed with treachery, when he honestly confessed that every day after the vegetable repast he ate a good beef-steak. This fact plunged the others in despair, and Leigh Hunt assured me that on vegetable diet his constitution had received a blow from which he had never recovered. With Shelley it was different, for he was by nature formed to regard animal food repulsively.”[451]
The causes of the enmity of the press were political rather than literary or personal and have already been sufficiently dwelt upon in the preceding chapters. The strong rivalry between Edinburgh and London as publishing strongholds intensified the strife. Hunt in particular had centered attention upon himself by his persistent and violent attacks on Gifford and Southey for several years previous to 1817. BesidesThe Examiner’spersistent allusions to these two unregenerates, a savage diatribe had appeared in theFeast of the Poets, which alluded to Gifford’s humble origin and mediocre ability, charged him with being a government tool, and continued: “But a vile, peevish temper, the more inexcusable in its indulgence, because he appears to have had early warning of its effects, breaks out in every page of his criticism, and only renders his affected grinning the more obnoxious ... I pass over the nauseous epistle to Peter Pindar, and even notes to his Baviad and Mœviad, where though less vulgar in his language, he has a great deal of the pert cant and snip-snap which he deprecates.”[452]During 1817,The Examinerhad concerned itself particularlywith Southey. He had been called an apostate, a hypocrite, and almost every other name in Hunt’s abusive vocabulary. Sir Walter Scott had not been spared. His politics were said to be easily estimated by the “simple fact, that of all the advocates of Charles the Second, he is the least scrupulous in mentioning his crimes, because he is the least abashed;” his command of prose was declared equal to nothing beyond “a plain statement or a brief piece of criticism;” his poetry “a little thinking conveyed in a great many words.”[453]Hunt thus secured to himself, through offensive and aggressive abuse, the hostility of the Tories both in England and in Scotland. His weaknesses and affectations made him a conspicuous and assailable target for the inevitable return fire.[454]
The establishment by the Tories of theQuarterly Reviewin 1809 and ofBlackwood’s Magazinein 1817 was with the view of opposing and, if possible, of suppressing theEdinburgh ReviewandThe Examiner. The brunt of the hostility fell upon the latter, for Hunt, by reason of his extreme social and religious policy, could not always rally theEdinburgh Reviewto his support. With the founding of theLondon Magazinein 1820 he had a new ally in its editor, John Scott, but the war had then already raged for three years, and Scott fell a victim to it in two years’ time.[455]By a process of elimination Scottfixed the identity of “Z”—such was the only signature of the articles on the Cockney School inBlackwood’s—upon Lockhart. He also asserted that Lockhart was the editor of the magazine. Lockhart demanded an apology. His friend Christie took up the quarrel. In the duel which followed Scott was fatally wounded. His death followed Keats’s within four days.
The method of attack with theQuarterlyand withBlackwood’swas much the same. They differed chiefly in the style of approach. The former may be compared to heavy artillery, slow, cumbrous and crushing. The reviews indeed often verge on dullness and stupidity. Neither Gifford nor Southey seemed to have been blessed with the saving grace of humor in dealing with the Cockney School.Blackwood’s, on the other hand, had too much, for whenever one of the so-called Cockneys was mentioned, its contributors wallowed in the mire of coarse buffoonery and cruel satire, disgusting scandal and vulgar parody. The only counter-irritant to such a dose is the clever joking and keen humor; but even when this is clean, which is rare, the whole is rendered unpalatable by the thought of its cruelty and of its frequent falsity. Furthermore,Blackwood’swas more merciless in its persecution than theQuarterlyin that it was untiring. It was perpetually discharging a fresh fusilade. Both magazines disguised their real motives under a cloak of religious zeal and monarchical loyalty.
While Hunt did much to bring the hornet’s nest about his ears, he was not wholly deserving of the amount, and not at all of the kind, of stinging calumny that he had to endure. Neither were the members of the Cockney School the only ones who provoked such antagonism from the same magazine. Other famous libels ofBlackwood’sthat should be mentioned to show the disposition of its controllers were theChaldeeManuscript; theMadonna of Dresdenand other effusions of the “Baron von Lauerwinckel”; theDiaryandHoræ Sinicæ of Ensign O’Doherty; and theDiary of William Wastle, Blackwood and Dr. Morris.Letter to Sir Walter Scott, Bart., on the Moral and other Characteristics of the Ebony and Shandrydan School,[456]cites a full list ofBlackwood’svictims. These, besides those of the Cockney School, were said to be Jeffrey, Professor Playfair, Professor Dugald Stewart, Professor Leslie, James Macintosh, Lord Brougham, Moore, Professor David Ricardo, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Pringle, Dalzell, Cleghorn, Graham, Sharpe, Jameson, and Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd. The characters inNoctes Ambrosianæ, Ticklers, Scorpions and Shepherds, were said by the pamphleteer to respectively tickle, sting and stultify, and to make a business “of insulting worth, offending delicacy, caluminating genius, and outraging the decencies and violating all the sanctities of life.” Their weapons were “loathsome billingsgate and brutality,” and “sublime bathos.” An interesting statement, not elsewhere found, is made by the anonymous author of the pamphlet that the proprietor of the Black Bull Inn imputed the death of his wife to the first volume ofPeter’s Letters to his Kinsfolk, a series similar to theNoctes Ambrosianæ. Sir Walter Scott is told that he cannot remain innocent if he remains indifferent to the machinations of the “Ebony and Shandrydan School”—as the writer pleases to call theBlackwood’sgroup. Another interesting pamphlet of like nature isThe Scorpion Critic Unmasked; or Animadversions on a Pretended Review of “Fleurs, a Poem, in Four Books,” which appeared in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine for June, 1821, in a Letter to a Friend.[457]Blackwood’shad called Nathaniel John Hollingsworth, the author of the poem, and others of his type, the “Leg of Mutton School.”[458]Nothingin fact seems to have given this magazine so much malicious delight as to create schools, perhaps in a spirit of rivalry with the “Lake School” of theEdinburgh Review. In the preceding April the “Manchester School” had been presented byBlackwood’sto the public. Hollingsworth in turn created the “Scorpion School” in order to derideBlackwood’s. Other pamphlets of the same kind wereRebellion again Gulliver; or R-D-C-L-SM in Lilliput.A Poetical Fragment from a Lilliputian Manuscript, an anonymous publication which appeared in Edinburgh in 1820;Aspersions answered: an explanatory Statement, advanced to the Public at Large, and to Every Reader of The Quarterly Review in Particular;[459]andAnother Article for the Quarterly Review;[460]both by William Hone in reply to the charge of irreligion made by theQuarterlyagainst him.
William Blackwood, John Wilson or “Christopher North,” Lockhart, and perhaps Maginn, share the blame severally ofBlackwood’s; while in the case of theQuarterly, to Gifford and Southey, already mentioned, must be added Sir Walter Scott and Croker. The two last certainly countenanced the actions of the others, even if they took no more active part. There seems to be no way of determining the individual authorship of the various articles. It was a secret jealously guarded at the time and it is unlikely that any further disclosures will come to light. The victims themselves hazarded as many guesses as more recent critics with no greater degree of certainty. Leigh Hunt thought that the articles were written by Sir Walter Scott;[461]Hazlitt said, “To pay those fellowsin their own coin, the way would be to begin with Walter Scottand have at his clump foot;”[462]Charles Dilke thought that the articles were written by Lockhart with the encouragement of Scott;[463]Haydon thought that “Z” was Terry the actor, an intimate of the Blackwood party, who had been exasperated because Hunthad failed to notice him inThe Examiner;[464]Shelley fancied that the articles in theQuarterlywere by Southey, and, on his denial, attributed them to Henry Hart Milman.[465]Mrs. Oliphant in her two ponderous volumes,William Blackwood and His Sons, practically asserts that “Z” was Lockhart.[466]If the extent of her research is to be the gauge of its value, her opinion is a very valuable one. Mr. Colvin advances the theory that “Z” was Wilson or Lockhart, possibly revised by William Blackwood.[467]Mr. Courthope thinks that Croker was the author of the articles onEndymionin theQuarterly.[468]Mr. Herford thinks that the whole campaign against the Cockney School was “largely worked out” by Lockhart.[469]
Hunt, Shelley, Hazlitt and Keats were the chief targets in the Cockney School. The attacks on each of these are of such length as to require separate discussion and will be returned to later. Those who attained lesser notoriety were Charles Lamb, Haydon, Barry Cornwall, John Hamilton Reynolds, Cornelius Webb, Charles Wells, Charles Dilke, Charles Lloyd, P. G. Patmore and John Ketch (Abraham Franklin). Those who moved within the same circle and who may by attraction be considered Cockneys are Charles Cowden Clarke and his wife, Vincent Novello, Charles Armitage Brown, the Olliers, Horace and James Smith, Douglas Jerrold, Joseph Severn, Laman Blanchard, Thomas Noon Talfourd, Thomas Love Peacock, and perhaps Thomas Hood.
Charles Lamb was first attacked in 1820. He had written essays somewhat in the manner of Hunt and he was a contributor to theLondon Magazine, which had blundered by censuring Castlereagh, Canning, and Wilberforce. The much-despised Hazlitt was another of its force. Accordingly, “Elia” was pronounced a “Cockney Scribbler,”Christ’s Hospitalan essay full of offensive and reprehensiblepersonalities,[470]andAll Fool’s Day“mere inanity and very Cockneyism.”[471]In April, 1822,Blackwood’sreturned to the attack but with more than usual good nature. InNoctes Ambrosianæof that month Tickler is made to say:
“Elia in his happiest moods delights me; he is a fine soul; but when he is dull, his dullness sets human stupidity at defiance. He is like a well-bred, ill-trained pointer. He has a fine nose, but he can’t or won’t range. He always keeps close to your foot, and then he points larks or tit-mice. You see him snuffing and snoking and brandishing his tail with the most impassioned enthusiasm, and then drawn round into a semi-circle he stands beautifully—dead set. You expect a burst of partridges, or a towering cock-pheasant, when lo, and behold, away flits a lark, or you discover a mouse’s nest, or there is absolutely nothing at all. Perhaps a shrew has been there the day before. Yet if Elia were mine, I would not part with him, for all his faults.”
“Elia in his happiest moods delights me; he is a fine soul; but when he is dull, his dullness sets human stupidity at defiance. He is like a well-bred, ill-trained pointer. He has a fine nose, but he can’t or won’t range. He always keeps close to your foot, and then he points larks or tit-mice. You see him snuffing and snoking and brandishing his tail with the most impassioned enthusiasm, and then drawn round into a semi-circle he stands beautifully—dead set. You expect a burst of partridges, or a towering cock-pheasant, when lo, and behold, away flits a lark, or you discover a mouse’s nest, or there is absolutely nothing at all. Perhaps a shrew has been there the day before. Yet if Elia were mine, I would not part with him, for all his faults.”
A few years later Lamb became one ofBlackwood’scontributors. Two attacks on Lamb proceeded from theQuarterly. TheConfessions of a Drunkard, the writer says, “affords a fearful picture of the consequences of intemperance which we have reason to know is a true tale.”[472]In hisProgressof Infidelity, Southey asserted that Elia’s volume of essays wanted “only sounder religious feeling, to be as delightful as it is original.”[473]Lamb’s wrath had been slowly gathering under the strain of repeated attacks on Hunt, Hazlitt and himself. It culminated with Southey’s article. In theLondon Magazineof October, 1823, he repudiated at considerable length the compliments thrust upon him at the expense of his friends, and denied the arraignment of drunkenness and heterodoxy. Matters were then smoothed over between him and Southey through an explanation which his unfailing good nature could not resist.
Haydon was nick-named the “Raphael of the Cockneys.”[474]Until the exhibition ofChrist’s Entry into Jerusalemin Edinburgh in 1820, he underwent the same kind of persecution as his friends. His “greasy hair” was about as notorious as Hazlett’s “pimpled face.” But the picture convertedBlackwood’screw. They apologized and confessed that their misapprehensions had been due to the absurd style of laudation inThe Examiner. Henceforward they acknowledged him to be “a high Tory and an aristocrat, and a sound Christian.”[475]
Bryan Waller Procter, or Barry Cornwall, was satirized inBlackwood’sfor his so-called effeminacy. In October, 1823, the following facetious passage occurs: “the merry thought of a chick—three tea-spoonsfulls of peas, the eighth part of a French roll, a sprig of cauliflower, and an almost imperceptible dew of parsley” would dine the author ofThe Deluge. The article on Shelley’sPosthumous Poemsin theEdinburghof July, 1824, was attributed to Procter byBlackwood’sand assailed in a most disgusting manner. The article was by Hazlitt.
John Hamilton Reynolds was a friend of Keats, one of theYoung Poetsreviewed by Hunt inThe Examiner, and a contributor to theLondon Magazine. His two poems,Eden of the ImaginationandFairies, showed Hunt’s influence. In the former he had even dared to praise Hunt in the notes.
Cornelius Webb was the author of numerous poems which exhibit in a marked degree the Huntian peculiarities of diction pointed out in the first chapter. He is moreover responsible for the unfortunate lines so often quoted in derision by Blackwood’s:
“KeatsThe Muses’ son of promise! and what featsHe yet may do.”
His sonnets in theLiterary Pocket Bookwere thus reviewed inBlackwood’sof December, 1821: “Now, Cornelius Webbe is a Jaw-breaker. Let any man who desires to have his ivory dislodged, read the above sonnet to March. Or shall we call Cornelius, the grinder? After reading aloud these fourteen lines, we called in our Odontist, and he found that every tooth in our head was loosened, and a slight fracture in the jaw. ‘My dearest Christopher’, said the Odontist, in his wonted classical spirit, ‘beware the Ides of March.’ So saying, he bounced up in our faces and disappeared.”
Charles Wells was a friend of Hazlitt and of Keats. In true Cockney fashion he sent the latter a sonnet and some roses and thus began the acquaintance. Dilke was a friend of Keats, a radical, and an independent critic in the manner of Hunt. Charles Lloyd was Lamb’s friend, one of the contributors to theLiterary Pocket Bookof 1820, and a poet of sentimental and descriptive propensities. P. G. Patmore was “Count Tims, the Cockney.”[476]Although he was a correspondent ofBlackwood’s, his son has remarked that he was notpersona grata, but was employed to secure news from London; and permitted to write only when he did not defend his friends too much.[477]“John Ketch” (Abraham Franklin) is mentioned by Lord Byron as one of the “Cockney Scribblers.”[478]Thomas Hood, as brother-in-law of Reynolds, as assistant editor of theLondon Magazine, and as an imitator in a small degree in his early work of Lamb and of Hunt may be enumerated among the Cockneys, although he is not usually included. Laman Blanchard was the friend of Procter, Lamb and Hunt. He imitated Procter’sDramatic Sketchesand Lamb’sEssays. Talfourd was a member of the circle and the friend and biographer of Lamb. He defended Edward Moxon when he was prosecuted for publishingQueen Mab. Peacock was the friend of Shelley. The Ollier brothers, publishers, introduced Keats, Shelley, Hunt, Lamb and Procter to the public.[479]
Although Byron was frequently at war withBlackwood’sand theQuarterly, and although he was closely associated with Shelley and Hunt, he was never stigmatized as a member of the Cockney School. Yet through his alliance with them he came in for some opprobrium that he would otherwise have escaped.Blackwood’sstrove through ridicule to prevent any growth of familiarity with Hunt or his fraternity. Its attitude towards the dedication to Byron of theStory of Riminihas already been mentioned. Hunt’s statement already quoted onp. 95 that “for the drama, whatever good passages such a writer will always put forth, we hold that he (Byron) has no more qualification than we have” was a choice morsel for the Scotch birds of prey, enjoyed to the fullest extent in a review ofLyndsay’s Dramas of the Ancient World:
“Prigs will be preaching—and nothing but conceit cometh out of Cockaigne. What an emasculated band of dramatists have deployed upon our boards. A pale-faced, sallow set, like the misses of some Cockney boarding-school, taking a constitutional walk, to get rid of their habits of eating lime out of the wall.... But it was reserved to the spirit of atheism of an age, to talk of a Cockney writing a tragedy. When the mind ceases to believe in a Providence, it can believe in anything else; but the pious soul feels that while to dream, even in sleep, that a Cockney had written a successful tragedy, would be repugnant to reason; certainly a more successful tragedy could not be imagined, from the utter destruction of Cockaigne and all its inhabitants. An earthquake or a shower of lava would be too complimentary to the Cockneys; but what do you think of a shower of soot from a multitude of foul chimneys, and the smell of gas from exploded pipes. Something might be made of the idea.... The truth is, that these mongrel and doggerel drivellers have an instinctive abhorrence of a true poet; and they all ran out like so many curs baying at the feet of the Pegasus on which Byron rode ... and the eulogists of homely, and fireside, and little back-parlour incest, what could they imagine of the unseduceable spirit of the spotless Angiolina?... When Elliston, ignorant of what one gentleman owes to another, or driven by stupidity to forget it, brought the Doge on the stage, how crowed the Bantam Cocks of Cockaigne to see it damned!... But Manfred and the Doge are not dead; while all that small fry have disappeared in the mud, and are dried up like so many tadpoles in a ditch, under the summer drowth. ‘Lord Byron,’ quoth Mr. Leigh Hunt, ‘has about as much dramatic genius asourselves!’ He might as well have said, ‘Lucretia had about as much chastity as my own heroine in Rimini;’ or, ‘Sir Phillip Sidney was about as much of the gentleman as myself!’”[480]
“Prigs will be preaching—and nothing but conceit cometh out of Cockaigne. What an emasculated band of dramatists have deployed upon our boards. A pale-faced, sallow set, like the misses of some Cockney boarding-school, taking a constitutional walk, to get rid of their habits of eating lime out of the wall.... But it was reserved to the spirit of atheism of an age, to talk of a Cockney writing a tragedy. When the mind ceases to believe in a Providence, it can believe in anything else; but the pious soul feels that while to dream, even in sleep, that a Cockney had written a successful tragedy, would be repugnant to reason; certainly a more successful tragedy could not be imagined, from the utter destruction of Cockaigne and all its inhabitants. An earthquake or a shower of lava would be too complimentary to the Cockneys; but what do you think of a shower of soot from a multitude of foul chimneys, and the smell of gas from exploded pipes. Something might be made of the idea.... The truth is, that these mongrel and doggerel drivellers have an instinctive abhorrence of a true poet; and they all ran out like so many curs baying at the feet of the Pegasus on which Byron rode ... and the eulogists of homely, and fireside, and little back-parlour incest, what could they imagine of the unseduceable spirit of the spotless Angiolina?... When Elliston, ignorant of what one gentleman owes to another, or driven by stupidity to forget it, brought the Doge on the stage, how crowed the Bantam Cocks of Cockaigne to see it damned!... But Manfred and the Doge are not dead; while all that small fry have disappeared in the mud, and are dried up like so many tadpoles in a ditch, under the summer drowth. ‘Lord Byron,’ quoth Mr. Leigh Hunt, ‘has about as much dramatic genius asourselves!’ He might as well have said, ‘Lucretia had about as much chastity as my own heroine in Rimini;’ or, ‘Sir Phillip Sidney was about as much of the gentleman as myself!’”[480]
Byron’s attitude toward the Cockney School was expressed in a letter written to John Murray during the Bowles controversy:
“With the rest of his (Hunt’s) young people I have no acquaintance, except through some things of theirs (which have been sent out without my desire), and I confess that till I had read them I was not aware of the full extent of human absurdity. Like Garrick’s ‘Ode to Shakespeare,’they‘defy criticism.’ These are of the personages who decry Pope....Mr. Hunt redeems himself by occasional beauties; but the rest of these poor creatures seem so far gone that I would not ‘march through Coventry with them, that’s flat!’ were I in Mr. Hunt’s place. To be sure, he has ‘led his ragamuffins where they will be well peppered’; but a system-maker must receive all sorts of proselytes. When they have really seen life—when they have felt it—when they have travelled beyond the far distant boundaries of the wilds of Middlesex—when they have overpassed the Alps of Highgate, and traced to its sources the Nile of the New River—then, and not till then, can it properly be permitted to them to despise Pope.... The grand distinction of the under forms of the new school of poets is theirvulgarity. By this I do not mean that they are coarse, but ‘shabby-genteel,’ as it is termed. A man may becoarseand yet notvulgar, and the reverse.... It is in theirfinerythat the new school aremostvulgar, and they may be known by this at once; as what we called at Harrow “A Sunday blood” might be easily distinguished from a gentleman, although his clothes might be the better cut, and his boots the best blackened of the two:—probably because he made the one or cleaned the other, with his own hands.... In the present case, I speak of writing, not of persons. Of the latter I know nothing; of the former I judge as it is found.”[481]
“With the rest of his (Hunt’s) young people I have no acquaintance, except through some things of theirs (which have been sent out without my desire), and I confess that till I had read them I was not aware of the full extent of human absurdity. Like Garrick’s ‘Ode to Shakespeare,’they‘defy criticism.’ These are of the personages who decry Pope....Mr. Hunt redeems himself by occasional beauties; but the rest of these poor creatures seem so far gone that I would not ‘march through Coventry with them, that’s flat!’ were I in Mr. Hunt’s place. To be sure, he has ‘led his ragamuffins where they will be well peppered’; but a system-maker must receive all sorts of proselytes. When they have really seen life—when they have felt it—when they have travelled beyond the far distant boundaries of the wilds of Middlesex—when they have overpassed the Alps of Highgate, and traced to its sources the Nile of the New River—then, and not till then, can it properly be permitted to them to despise Pope.... The grand distinction of the under forms of the new school of poets is theirvulgarity. By this I do not mean that they are coarse, but ‘shabby-genteel,’ as it is termed. A man may becoarseand yet notvulgar, and the reverse.... It is in theirfinerythat the new school aremostvulgar, and they may be known by this at once; as what we called at Harrow “A Sunday blood” might be easily distinguished from a gentleman, although his clothes might be the better cut, and his boots the best blackened of the two:—probably because he made the one or cleaned the other, with his own hands.... In the present case, I speak of writing, not of persons. Of the latter I know nothing; of the former I judge as it is found.”[481]
Byron’s opinion of Keats is too well known to need repetition. He thought there was hope for Barry Cornwall if “he don’t get spoiled by green tea and the praises of Pentonville and Paradise Row. The pity of these men is, that they never lived inhigh lifenor insolitude: there is no medium for the knowledge of thebusyor thestillworld. If admitted into high life for a season, it is merely asspectators—they form no part of the mechanism thereof.”[482]
Blackwood’sof December, 1822, in a review ofThe Liberal, advised Byron to “cut the Cockney”—“by far the most unaccountable of God’s works.” Hunt is denominated “the menial of a lord.” When Byron notwithstanding its advice continued his “conjunction with these deluded drivellers of Cockaigne”Blackwood’sgrew savage towards the peer himself: it is said that he suffered himself
“to be so enervated by the unworthy Delilahs which have enslaved his imagination, as to be reduced to the foul office of displaying blind buffooneries before the Philistines of Cockaigne ... I feel a moral conviction that his lordship must have taken the Examiner, the Liberal, the Rimini,the Round Table, as his model, and endeavored to write himself down to the level of the capacities and the swinish tastes of those with whom he has the misfortune, originally, I believe, from charitable motives, to associate. This is the most charitable hypothesis which I can frame. Indeed there are some verses which have all the appearance of having been interpolated by the King of the Cockneys.”[483]
“to be so enervated by the unworthy Delilahs which have enslaved his imagination, as to be reduced to the foul office of displaying blind buffooneries before the Philistines of Cockaigne ... I feel a moral conviction that his lordship must have taken the Examiner, the Liberal, the Rimini,the Round Table, as his model, and endeavored to write himself down to the level of the capacities and the swinish tastes of those with whom he has the misfortune, originally, I believe, from charitable motives, to associate. This is the most charitable hypothesis which I can frame. Indeed there are some verses which have all the appearance of having been interpolated by the King of the Cockneys.”[483]
When Byron and Hunt had separated,Blackwood’sattempted to reinstate Byron in his former position by declaring that he had been disgusted beyond endurance on Hunt’s arrival in Italy and that he had cut him very soon in a “paroxysm of loathing.”[484]
The declaration of war between the Cockneys and the Tory press was made with a review of theStory of Riminiin theQuarterlyof January, 1816. From this time on Hunt was the choice prey of the two magazines, and others were attacked principally on account of him, or reached through him. Hunt’s writings were termed “eruptions of a disease” with which he insists upon “inoculating mankind;” his language “an ungrammatical, unauthorized, chaotic jargon.”Blackwood’sof October, 1817, contained the first of the long series of abusive articles which appeared in its columns. Hazlitt in theEdinburgh Reviewin June of the preceding year had acclaimed theStory of Riminito be “a reminder of the pure and glorious style that prevailed among us before French modes and French methods of criticism.” In it he had discovered a resemblance to Chaucer, to the voluptuous pathos of Boccaccio and to the laughing graces of Ariosto. To offset such statementsBlackwood’sdubbed the new school the “Cockney School” and made Hunt its chief doctor and professor. (Later, in 1823,Blackwood’sproudly claimed the honor of christening and said that theQuarterlyused the epithet only when it had become a part of English criticism.) It declared the dedication to Byron an insult and the poem the product of affectation and gaudiness and continued:
“The beaux are attorney’s apprentices, with chapeau bras and Limerick gloves—fiddlers, harp teachers, and clerks of genius: the belles are faded,fan-twinkling spinsters, prurient vulgar misses from school, and enormous citizen’s wives. The company are entertained with luke-warm negus, and the sounds of a paltry piano forte.... His poetry resembles that of a man who has kept company with kept-mistresses. His muse talks indelicately like the tea-sipping milliner’s girl. Some excuse for her there might have been, had she been hurried away by imagination or passion; but with her, indecency seems a disease, she appears to speak unclean things from perfect inanition.” Hunt “would fain be always tripping and waltzing, and he is very sorry that he cannot be allowed to walk about in the morning with yellow breeches and flesh-colored silk stockings. He sticks an artificial rosebud in his button hole in the midst of winter. He wears no neckcloth, and cuts his hair in imitation of the prints of Petrarch.”
“The beaux are attorney’s apprentices, with chapeau bras and Limerick gloves—fiddlers, harp teachers, and clerks of genius: the belles are faded,fan-twinkling spinsters, prurient vulgar misses from school, and enormous citizen’s wives. The company are entertained with luke-warm negus, and the sounds of a paltry piano forte.... His poetry resembles that of a man who has kept company with kept-mistresses. His muse talks indelicately like the tea-sipping milliner’s girl. Some excuse for her there might have been, had she been hurried away by imagination or passion; but with her, indecency seems a disease, she appears to speak unclean things from perfect inanition.” Hunt “would fain be always tripping and waltzing, and he is very sorry that he cannot be allowed to walk about in the morning with yellow breeches and flesh-colored silk stockings. He sticks an artificial rosebud in his button hole in the midst of winter. He wears no neckcloth, and cuts his hair in imitation of the prints of Petrarch.”
Nature in the eyes of a Cockney was said to consist only of “green fields, jaunty streams, and o’er-arching leafiness;” no mountains were higher than Highgate-hill nor streams more pastoral than the Serpentine River.[485]Blackwood’swas near the truth in its criticism of Hunt’s conception of nature. While his appreciation was very genuine, it was restricted to rural or suburban scenes, “of the town, towny.”[486]The scale was that of the window garden or a flower pot. Who but he could rhapsodize over a cut flower or a bit of green; or could speak in spring “of being gay and vernal and daffodilean?”[487]Yet he produced some delightful rural poetry. Take this for instance:
“You know the rural feeling, and the charmThat stillness has for a world-fretted ear,’Tis now deep whispering all about me here,With thousand tiny bushings, like a swarmOf atom bees, or fairies in alarmOr noise of numerous bliss from distant spheres.”[488]
The general characteristics of the school, briefly summarized, were said to be ignorance and vulgarity, an entire absence of religion, a vague and sour Jacobinism for patriotism, admiration of Chaucer and Spenser when they resemble Hunt, and extreme moral depravity and obscenity. November, 1817, ofBlackwood’scontained the notorious accusation against theStory of Riminiof immorality of purpose.[489]The poem was called “the genteel comedy of incest.” Francesca’s sin was declared voluntary and her sufferings sentimental. The changes from the historical version, an espousal by proxy instead of betrothal, the omission of deformity, the substitution of the duel for murder, and the happy opening, were pronounced wilful perversions for the furtherance of corruption. Ford’s treatment of the same theme much more elevated. Hunt’s defense was that the catastrophe was Francesca’s sufficient punishment.[490]In May, 1818, the same charge was repeated: “No woman who has not either lost her chastity, or is desirous of losing it, ever read the ‘Story of Rimini’ without the flushings of shame and of self-reproach.”
The Examinerof November 2 and 16, 1817, quoted extracts from the first of these articles and called upon the author to avow himself; otherwise to an “utter disregard ofTruthand Decency, he adds the height of Meanness andCowardice.”[491]As might have been expected, this demand brought forth nothing more than a disavowal from the London publishers who handledBlackwood’sof all responsibility in the matter. June 14, 1818,The Examinerassailed the editor of theQuarterlyas a government critic who disguised a political quarrel in literary garb, as a sycophant to power and wealth:
“Grown old in the service of corruption, he drivels on to the last with prostituted impotence, and shameless effrontery; salves a meagre reputation for wit, by venting the driblets of his spleen and impertinence on others; answers their arguments by confuting himself; mistakes habitual obtuseness of intellect for a particular acuteness, not to be imposed upon by shallow pretensions; unprincipled rancor for zealous loyalty; and the irritable, discontented, vindictive, and peevish effusions of bodily pain and mental infirmity, for proofs of refinement of taste and strength of understanding.”
“Grown old in the service of corruption, he drivels on to the last with prostituted impotence, and shameless effrontery; salves a meagre reputation for wit, by venting the driblets of his spleen and impertinence on others; answers their arguments by confuting himself; mistakes habitual obtuseness of intellect for a particular acuteness, not to be imposed upon by shallow pretensions; unprincipled rancor for zealous loyalty; and the irritable, discontented, vindictive, and peevish effusions of bodily pain and mental infirmity, for proofs of refinement of taste and strength of understanding.”
This condescension to a use of his enemies’ weapons only weakened Hunt’s position. Yet in the light of the secrecy maintained at the time and the mystery surrounding the matter ever since, it is interesting to readBlackwood’scontorted reply to Hunt’s demand for an open fight, written as late as January, 1826:
“Nor let it be said that, either on this or any other occasion, the moral Satyrists (sic) in this magazine ever wished to remain unknown. How, indeed, could they wish for what they well knew was impossible? All the world has all along known the names of the gentlemen who have uttered our winged words. Nor did it ever, for one single moment, enter into the head of any one of them to wish—not to scorn concealment. To gentlemen, too, they at all times acted like gentlemen; but was it ever dreamt by the wildest that they were to consider as such the scum of the earth? ‘If I but knew who was my slanderer,’ was at one time the ludicrous skraigh of the convicted Cockney. Why did he not ask? and what would he have got by asking? Shame and confusion of face—unanswerable argument and cruel chastisement. For before one word would have been deigned to the sinner, he must have eaten—and the bitter roll is yet ready for him—all the lies he had told for the last twenty years, and must either have choked or been kicked.”
“Nor let it be said that, either on this or any other occasion, the moral Satyrists (sic) in this magazine ever wished to remain unknown. How, indeed, could they wish for what they well knew was impossible? All the world has all along known the names of the gentlemen who have uttered our winged words. Nor did it ever, for one single moment, enter into the head of any one of them to wish—not to scorn concealment. To gentlemen, too, they at all times acted like gentlemen; but was it ever dreamt by the wildest that they were to consider as such the scum of the earth? ‘If I but knew who was my slanderer,’ was at one time the ludicrous skraigh of the convicted Cockney. Why did he not ask? and what would he have got by asking? Shame and confusion of face—unanswerable argument and cruel chastisement. For before one word would have been deigned to the sinner, he must have eaten—and the bitter roll is yet ready for him—all the lies he had told for the last twenty years, and must either have choked or been kicked.”
In January, 1818,Blackwood’sissued a manifesto of their future campaign. The Keatses, Shelleys, and Webbes, were to be taken in turn. The charges of profligacy and obscenity against Hunt’s poem were repeated, but it was emphatically stated that there was no implication made in reference to his private character—an ominous statement that any one with any knowledge ofBlackwood’susual methods could only construe into a warning that such an implication would speedily follow. The article was signed “Z,” a shadowy personage who sorrowfully called himself the “present object” of Hunt’s resentment and dislike. He seems to have expected gratitudeand affection in return for articles that would compare favorably with the most scurrilous billingsgate of any of the Humanistic controversies. In May, 1818, with due ceremony, Hunt was proclaimed “King of the Cockneys” and editor of the Cockney Court-gazette. His kingdom was the “Land of Cockaigne,” a borrowing, most probably, from the thirteenth century satire by that name. Keats’s sonnet containing the line “He of the rose, the violet, the spring” became the official Cockney poem—by an “amiable but infatuated bardling.” John Hunt was made Prince John. With the lapse of time Hunt’s crimes seem to have multiplied. He is called a lunatic, a libeller, an abettor of murder and of assassination, a coward, an incendiary, a Jacobin, a plebeian and a foe to virtue. He is instructed, if sickened with the sins and follies of mankind, to withdraw