CORRESPONDENCE OF LEIGH HUNT.*
THESE two volumes are easier to read than to review; for though they are full of interesting matter, it is not of a kind which either requires criticism, or will bear being epitomised. More than that, "The Autobiography of Leigh Hunt" has already given to the world the chief facts of the poet's life, and afforded an opportunity to a younger generation of writers for recording their views of his career. These letters, however, are valuable for the additional evidence which they supply, that the current estimate of Leigh Hunt's character is on the whole a just one; and it is in this capacity that they admit, we think, of being made most interesting to our readers. There is one sensation, of which we are uninterruptedly conscious, as we read this correspondence, and that is, that we are in the com- pany of a weak man. Both in his gaiety and his grief, his business and his pleasure, there is in all he writes a want of fulness of tone— a something neither exactly feminine, nor exactly frivolous, but thin and volatile. It shows with what awe the then comparatively un- known power of the press was inspiring our Government, that Leigh Hunt's papers in the Examiner should ever have consigned him to a prison. They are words without thought, and would now-a-days take rank with the rhetorical rhapsodies of the nation. But they had the advantage of being truth, which lent them a power not their own. It is only natural, though of course it is not inevitable, that a weak man should often show signs of that temper, which is described as "pettishness ;" and of such a temper there are numerous indications in these volumes. A 'good specimen to take will be Leigh Hunt's correspondence with the Editor of the Edinburgh Review, at that tinie (1841) a Mr. Napier, who had warned Hunt against "colloquialisms" in his articles ; for this particular instance will enable us to introduce at the same time a specimen of the rare good sense and sound prac- tical judgment of the late Lord Macaulay. Hunt had already written one or two articles for the Edinburgh Review, in regard to one of which Napier had expressed himself in a very handsome and complimentary. manner. He now proposed to write another, provided he could find "some chatty subject," and it was the answer to this proposal which drew down his wrath upon the editor. After refemiag to another article upon the subject of Petrarch, which Hunt had in contempla- tion, Napier went on to say that he should like an intermediate short article very much, but that Hunt's use of the word "chatty" had rather alarmed him. He had, he said, already been much surprised by the prevalence of colloquial, not to say vulgar, expressions in the style of so accomplished a scholar, who had written, too, such exqui- site verses ; and his surprise had sometimes carried him so far as to make him fear for the durability of their connexion. Then, after some polite assurances of his confidence that such errors could arise only from haste, he adds that if Hunt will send him an article for the next number "in an amusing but gentlemanlike style," he will be delighted to receive it.
Now we think this language was inconsiderate. For a man doesn't like to be told that a valuable engagement is in peril, because he has used the word "bit" twelve times in an article ; or to have it hinted, however indirectly, that anything he has ever done is not gentlemanlike. But a man of sense, dignity, and self-respect would probably have taken no notice of it, and have explained it away to himself as Lord Macaulay afterwards explained it. But Hunt wrote to Macaulay what we can only describe as a feeble and lachrymose letter begging for his advice and assistance under this in- sult to his feelings. Macaulay wrote back an answer which is a model of propriety and wisdom. ` Napier," said he, had not intended by
• of Leigh Hunt. Edited by his Eldest Son. In two volumes. SmitliCeravnyrirdeneeder. the word gentlemanlike to reflect on Hunt's character or manners. His taste in composition was not so catholic as some men's, "He thinks your style too colloquial; and, no doubt, it has a very collo- quial character. I wish it to retain that character, which to me is exceed- ingly pleasant. But I think that the danger against which you have to guard is excess in that direction. Napier is the very man to be startled by the smallest excess in that direction. Therefore I am not surprised that, when you proposed to send him a chatty article, he took fright, and recommended dignity and severity of style; and care to avoid what he calls vulgar expressions, such as bit. The question is purely one of taste. It has nothing to do with the morals or the honour.
.
"As to the tone of Napier's criticism, you must remember that his posi- tion with regard to the Review, and the habits of his life, are such that he cannot be expected to pick his words very nicely. He has superintended more than one great literary undertaking,—the Encyclopedia Britannica, for example. He has had to collect contributions from hundreds of men of letters, and has been answerable to the publishers and to the public for the whole. Of course he has been under the necessity of very frequently cor- recting, disapproving, and positively rejecting articles; and is now as little disturbed about such things as Sir Benjamin Brodie about performing a surgical operation. To my own personal knowledge he has positively refused to accept papers even from so great a man as Lord Brougham. He only a few months ago received an article on foreign politics from an eminent diplomatist. The style was not to his taste; and he altered it to an extent which greatly irritated the author. Mr. Carlyle formerly wrote for the Review,—a man of talents, though, in my opinion, absurdly over- praised by some of his admirers. I believe, though I do not know, that he ceased to write because the oddities of his diction and his new words compounded is la Teutonique drew such strong remonstrances from Napier. I could mention other instances, but these are sufficient to show you what I mean. He is really a good, friendly, and honourable man. He wishes for your assistance, but he thinks your style too colloquial. He conceives that, as the editor of the Review, he ought to tell you what he thinks. And, having during many years been in the habit of speaking his whole mind on such matters almost weekly to all sorts of people, he expresses himself with more plainness than delicacy."
This sensible advice had the desired effect, and Hunt proceeded with his article, though what was the subject which he eventually selected as a "chatty one," we are not informed. Akin to pettishness, is egotism: that kind of egotism, at least, which is compounded of vanity and susceptibility. And we find a good deal of this, too, in Leigh Hunt's correspondence. In the last dozen years of his life this failing had increased. "The Story of Bimini," the "Legend of Florence," and the Old Examiners, are for ever on his mind and on his pen. The great events which were passing in Europe, the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny, the Italian lAevolution, found him with an averted face fixed fondly on the past, of which the central figure was himself. Literally, there is not one allusion to any one of these three events throughout the whole of his correspondence. We must, however, in justice, allow that there are two circumstances which palliate this strange indifference. One is, that his struggle for a livelihood lasted to his dying day, and absorbed all the mental energies which age and sickness had left him. The Other is, that the revival of the old warlike spirit both in England and Europe must naturally have been distasteful to the veteran opponent of Toryism, with which it is commonly. identified. His laurels had been earned in support of widely different ideas; and he states as much, in fact, in a letter to his friend, Mr. Hunter (1857), where he says it is not the business of a poet "to halloo on these brutalities.'
But, above all, through these letters is discernible that sensuous temperament which has often been imputed to Leigh–Hunt, and for
, which, in our opinion, he has been blamed too severely. There is no great harm, after all, in a man being fond of flowers, fruit, and young spring greens, unless he neglects higher things in order to attain them. But Leigh Hunt was very fond of them ; and his fondness was something, we fancy, quite different from what is com- monly called a love of nature. "At present," says he, in a letter to Shelley, in 1818:
"I have made myself a nook to write in of a morning in the corner of the room where Raphael stood—as thus :—I have taken his place under the print of Shakspeare, in a chair with a table before me, put his bust on it, with a rose-tree at the side towards the door, and filled the outside of the window with geraniums, myrtles, daisies, heartsease, and a vase full of gay flowers; so that, with the new spring green in the garden, my books on the right, the picture of Jacques and the Stag under Milton, and two plaster- cast vases, which — has just sent me, on each side of the Mercury on the piano, I have nothing but sights of beauty, genius, and morality all about me."
" We have had a late spring here," he writes to the same corre- spondent two years afterwards :
"But it is supposed the summer will be the finer for it. The blossoms will not be so blighted. The fields and gardens are full of that exquisite young green, crisp and juicy, the quintessence of rain and sunshine, which is a beauty I suppose you will concede us even from the Vale of Arno."
Many other passages might be quoted, which all go to confirm the impression made by these ; namely, that he loved nature and natural beauties not only poetically but voluptuously; and this kind of tem- perament, if not kept in check by loftier and sterner conceptions, is just the one to give way to physical self-indulgence, even though it go no further than habits of indolence and contemplation. It is a significant feature in Leigh Hunt's career, that he never attained to any of the prizes of his profession. We mean even the inferior and ordinary prizes—the editorships of magazines and news- p_apers—which relieve a man at all events from the difficulties which Hunt experienced. Yet were it not for this circumstance, one of the most interesting, and in some respects most creditable aspects of his character and career would be wanting. We 'dean the aspect under which he comes before us at the age of three score years mid ten, still a workine litterateur and journalist, as he had begun life at twenty-five. We find him in these letters still apply- ing for work, still projecting articles, and still patching up republica- tions with all the ardour and freshness of one who had never looked for better things. Nor do we find in these letters any expressions of discontent with his own position in the abstract, or any of those complaints, which men of letters are too prone to make, that his merits were neglected by the world. He seems to have been fully satisfied to remain a literary man to the last, and to be quite happy if he could see his way before him for a month. He does once record with some degree of bitterness that an execution was put into his house for forty shillings; but then his chief cause of com- plaint seems to have been that the bailiff interrupted him at dinner. We don't say that this easy way of taking things testifies to the highest kind of philosophy. Yet there is something amiable in the life of uncomplaining toil which Hunt followed to the last, some- thing admirable in the simple fidelity with which he clung to litera- ture; and something very interesting to all literary men in the spectacle of a veteran of seventy-four going about the routine of his profession with all the freshness and hopefulness of youth.
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