loud, and dominant over all, exult the no less yelping orders of the
drover, indefinite, it is true, but expressive — rustical cogencies of 00
and oxi, the unintelligible jargon of the Corydon or Thrysis of Chalk-
Ditch, who Cometh, final and humane, with a bit of candle in his hat.
a spike at the end of his stick, and a hoarseness full of pastoral
catarrh and juniper."
It remains that Hunt's first and chief inspiration, in
his miscellanies as elsewhere, was literature. His best
essays, without considering those devoted to actual
criticism, are still on books and their makers.
Such are Social Genealogy, in which he traces "a link
of ' beamy hands ' from our own times up to Shake-
speare," and recalls, with fond enthusiasm, many notable
friendships between great writers ; and A Novel Party,
" in which the company consisted of those immortal,
though familiar creatures, the heroes and heroines of the
wonderful persons who have lived among us, called
novelists. . . . The Camillas and Evelinas were ex-
tremely entertaining, and told us a number of stories
that made us die with laughter. Their fault consisted in
talking too much about lords and pawnbrokers. . . .
We are afraid, from what we saw this evening, that poor
Joseph is not as well as he would be with his sister
Pamela. ... It seems that Lovelace and Clarissa live
in a neighbouring quarter, called Romance, a very grave
place, where few of the company visited. . . . Lady
Grandison was a regular beauty, but did not become a
132 LEIGH HUNT,
cloak. She was best in full dress. Pamela was a little,
soft-looking thing, who seemed as if butter would melt
in her mouth ! But she had a something in the corner
of her eye which told you that you had better take care
how you behaved yourself."
There is a passage on Bookstalls which betrays, through
all its playful delicacy, the writer's inherent carelessness
about his own practical interests : —
" In some instances (for it is not the case with everyone) your
second-hand bookseller condescends even to expect to be beaten
down in the price he charges, petty as it is ; and accordingly is
good enough to ask more than he will take, as though he did
nothing but refine upon the pleasures of the purchaser. Not content
with valuing knowledge and delight at a comparative nothing, he
takes ingenious steps to make even that nothing less ; and under
the guise of a petty struggle to the contrary (as if to give you an
agreeable sense of your energies) seems dissatisfied unless he can
send you away thrice blessed — blessed with the book, blessed with
the cheapness of it, and blessed with the advantage you have had
over him in making the cheapness cheaper. Truly we fear that out
of a false shame we have too often defrauded our second-hand friend
of the generous self-denial he is thus prepared to exercise in our
favour, and by giving him the price set down in his catalogue, left
him with impressions to our disadvantage."
Boohhinding and Indexes are pleasant papers, showing
indirectly that Leigh Hunt cared very little for any part
of a book but its thoughts. He was not a bibliophile,
as we understand the term, and probably never yearned
after a "first edition." In The World of Booh he main-
tains a thesis, undoubtedly true for himself, that we may
really learn more of a country from books than by
MISCELLANIST. 135
actually visiting it : — " You See that young man there,
turning down the corner of the dullest spot in Edinburgh,
with a dead wall over against it, and delight in his eyes?
He sees No, 4, the house where the girl lives he is in
love with. Now, what that place is to him, all places
are, in their proportion, to the lover of books, for he has
beheld them by the light of imagination and sympathy."
None of the above, however, can be compared for
variety of interest and sustained excellence to the de-
servedly popular My BooJcs. — " I entrench myself in my
books equally against sorrow and the weather. . . .
When I speak of being in contact with my books, I mean
it literally. I like to lean my head against them. . . .
I turn my back upon the sea ; I shut up even one of the
side windows looking upon the mountains,^ and retain no
prospect but that of the trees. On the right and left of
me are book-shelves ; a bookcase is affectionately open
in front of me ; and thus kindly enclosed with my books
and the green leaves, I write. ... I like a great library
next my study ; but for the study itself, give me a small
snug place, almost entirely walled with books. . . . The
very perusal of the backs is a 'discipline of humanity.' . . .
I have been a meek son in the family of book-losers. I
may affirm upon a moderate calculation, that I have lent
and lost in my time (and I am eight-and-thirty), half-a-
dozen decent-sized libraries — I mean books enough to
fill so many ordinary bookcases. ... I own I borrow
books with as much facility as I lend. ... I yield to
none in my love of bookstall urbanity. . . . Book-prints
' Written in Italy.
134 LEIGH HUNT.
of all sorts, bad and good, take with me as much as
when I was a child ; and I think some books, such as
Prior's Poems, ought always to have portraits of the
authors. ... I love an author the more for having been
himself a lover of books. The idea of an ancient library
perplexes our sympathies by its map-like volumes, rolled
upon cylinders. We cannot take kindly to a yard of wit,
or to thirty inches of moral observation, rolled out like
linen in a draper's shop. . . . The ancients had little of
what we call learning. They made it. They were also
no very eminent buyers of books. They made books
for posterity."
The paper closes with a familiar gossip of all the most
famous book-lovers, and the often-quoted aspiration : —
" In one small room, like the compressed spirits of Milton, can be
gathered together
' The assembled souls of all that men held wise.'
May I hope to become the meanest of these existences ? This is a
question which every author, who is a lover of books, asks himself
some time in his life, and which must be pardoned, because it can-
not be helped. I know not. I cannot exclaim with the poet,
' Oh, that my name were number'd among theirs.
Then gladly would I end my mortal days.'
For my mortal days, few and feeble as the rest of them may be, are
of consequence to others. But I should like to remain visible vi
this shape. The little of myself that pleases myself I could wish to
be accounted worth pleasing others. I should like to survive so,
were it only for the sake of those who love me in private, knowing
MISCELLANIST. 135
as I do what a treasure is the possession of a friend's mind, when he
is no more. At all events, nothing while I live and think can
deprive me of any value for such treasures. I can help the apprecia-
tion of them while I last, and love them till I die ; and perhaps, if
fortune turns her face once in kindness upon me before I go, I may
chance, some quiet day, to lay my over-beating temples on a book,
and so have the death I most envy."
VI. -CONCLUSION.
It had been Leigh Hunt's original intention, from which
he was dissuaded by friends, to include in Lord Byron
and his ContemjMraries an estimation of his own char-
acter. Most fortunately, the fragment was printed and
preserved, for, altliough written at the comparatively
early age of forty-four, and ill-suited for its original
destination, the frankness and insight which it exhibits
are indeed phenomena). This " estimate " is a confession
of unique value, revealing, with extraordinary coolness
and discrimination, the inner man : —
An Attempt of the Author to Estimate his
Own Character.
"As I have said so much of others, it may be proper
that I should be equally explicit with regard to myself.
I will be so, and solely on that account. There are
some things in this book, which make it proper to show
how little I desire to have qualities attributed to me, bad
or good, that I do not possess. What I have to say will
contain matter which no reputation for candour could
render it agreeable to say, and which nothing could in-
duce me to set down, if I did not believe that truth in
society were the one thing needful.
136
CONCLUSION. 137
" Born of parents of very different temperaments, and
after they had undergone great adversity, I beheve that
my existence has been modified accordingly. I am at
once the sickUest and most sanguine of my race, the
liveliest and most thoughtful, the most social and the
most solitary, the most indolent and the most laborious.
" I am not naturally a teller of truth. Impulse and
fancy would tend to make me the reverse ; but I saw the
danger of it ; I should admire sincerity, if it were for
nothing but the graces of it ; but I have learnt to love it
with all my heart and soul, as the only safe ground for
humanity to go upon, and the one thing desirable above
all others in the moral world. I believe truth to be that,
in words, which the discovery of the experimental philo-
sophy has been in science ; and that as the latter will in-
fallibly alter the face of society, and give it the most
new, golden, and unhoped-for opportunities, so the
former will be the secret for securing its happiness. I
feel certain, that if men could but compare notes to-
morrow, and confess to one another their real feelings
and desires, society would alter at once, by acclamation.
" I am naturally hasty and jealous ; or rather I was
made jealous as I believe others to be, in the common
course of education, for I do not believe that unloving
interferer with love to be a natural human passion. But
I have become jealous for others, more than of them ;
and the necessity for great patience has entirely subdued
my hastiness : but the power of pleasing, and great in-
dulgence from my friends, have left me a secret store of
self-love, by reason of which I find the first smarting of
138 LEIGH HUNT.
any wound to my vanity extremely painful to me, so that
I have to blush for myself for the very blushing that
heats my cheek. But the next minute I philosophise
myself quite out of the paroxysm ; and I will affirm, as
one of the surest things I know, that nobody can wound
my self-love so much as to hinder me from valuing what
is good in him, and proclaiming it. Melancholy has
done me that kind service, that it has taught me to think
too deeply of human nature, to quarrel at heart with any
being that belongs to it.
"Revenge I should be too indolent to care about, even
if I had not learnt to know it for what it is. I pretend
to be above nothing in a proud sense ; but some things
I have got remote from, and this is one.
" Early delicacy of temperament, imagination, and a life
of letters, accompanied with an improvidence partly oc-
casioned by indolence, partly by animal spirits, and
partly by the most singular missing of everything like an
arithmetical education, have rendered excitement so
tempting to me, that were it not for my love of what is
graceful, I fear that the necessity for health itself would
hardly hinder me from being a drinker, and even a
gourmand ; and I confess it is a constant and hard
exercise of my philosophy not to eat too much, and make
my stomach worse than it is.
" iSIy friends will be surprised to hear this. But I flatter
myself they will be more surprised when I tell them (and
I suffer inexpressible pain in the telling it) that I am not
a courageous man. I feel as if the respect of one sex,
and the love of the other, were forsaking me when I say
CONCLUSION. 139
SO ; but they ought not ; and this reflection re-assures
me. Yes : — circumstances, known only to myself, have
shown me that the organisation I was born with has been
weakened, by subsequent cares and demands upon it,
into a mortifying destitution of physical courage. In a
family of men remarkable for their bravery, I am the only
timid person. When I look round upon my brothers
I think that the fears of a mother, and the calamities
caused by the American War, have deprived me of a part
of my birthright. But I have great moral courage.
Allow me a pale face and a little reflection ; and as there
is scarcely a danger in life which I have not hazarded, so
there is none I could not go through with in a good
cause.
" I differ with the world upon some great points of
morals and religion. Modern philosophy, and new views
for society, have taught me to do so. I know that I
could have stood to the last — that I should not have
been the first or even the last ' faithless friend,' — by the
side of an unequivocally good system — good for all,
sincere, plain, equable, and fit for eternity. But I can-
not and will not be a traitor to the nobler aspirations
planted within us, and tending to produce such a system.
If the world can be altered, I will not be one to baulk
an event so glorious : if it cannot, my endeavours shall
be among those that keep it in heart. I have, indeed,
something of the Hamlet in me (these speculations are
far beyond either modesty or vanity), which makes me
sometimes misgive myself, and doubt whether what ap-
pears to me best at one time is the same at another.
140 IsEIGH HUNT.
But I was educated under one system, and learnt to
believe in another. I pretend to be exempt from no
weaknesses but falsehood, revenge, and implacability ;
and must take my chance among other stragglers, sure
only of good intentions. Oh, were others only sincere,
how gladly would I learn of them, instead of teach ;
and how surely would the world know what is best for
it, by the comparisons of their experience !
" It is a singular chance in my history, that I have been
led to give a personal account of another man — and that
an unfavourable one — when there is nobody less given
than myself to tattle and gossip, ( r who cares less to
make a case out for himself at another's expense. But
perhaps the greatest difference between me and any
other living writer (with the exception of Mr. Hazlitt) is
that I speak all in my own name and at my own risk,
whereas the custom is to rail and play the hypocrite in a
mask ; and none will have been so loud against me on
this occasion, as those who have played it most. I have
sympathised deeply with almost every pain and pleasure
of humanity ; — perhaps I might leave out the ' almost' ;
for as there is scarcely a pain, bodily or mental, which I
have not felt, so I am not aware of one which I have
not, at some period or other, apprehended, however
foolishly.
"I would not have missed the obligations I have had
from my friends, no, hardly to have been exempt from all
the cares of money ; so little do I hold with that writer,
who spoke the other day of ' the degrading obligations
of private friendship.' T see beyond that. But 1 do not
CONCLUSION. 141
the less hold with him, that it is ' comely and sweet ' to
be able to earn one's own sufficiency. I only think that
it should not be made so hard a matter to do so as
it very often is, by the systems of society, and the effects
which they have in reserve for us even before we are born,
and in our very temperaments as well as fortunes ; and
I think also that the world would have been losers in a
very large way, — far beyond what the utilitarians suppose,
and yet on their own ground — if certain men of a lively
and improvident genius — humanists, of the most per-
suasive order, had not sometimes left themselves under
the necessity of being assisted in a smaller way. But I
desire, for my own part, not to be excused in anything,
in which I do not take the whole of my fellow-creatures
and their errors along with me. Let me not be left out
of the pale of humanity, for praise or for blame; and I
am content. I desire only to teach and be taught ; or if
that be too presumptuous a saying, to learn and compare
notes. Happy and proud as I am to have been obliged,
[I] could have waived even that felicity to have saved
myself from the remorse of not having secured some-
thing for my children. But this I trust I am now in the
way of doing. They have wits of their own, thank God 1
if I should fail ; and they at least have a happy child-
hood, and learn to have a passion for a liberal justice.
"The rest of my character is to be seen in my writings ;
from which, for aught I know, the reader may draw a
truer picture than I can do of it in all its parts. A clever
but dishonourable French critic, who visited this country,
and got his notions of some of the Liberal writers from
142 LEIGH HUNT.
the tables of the Scotch Tories, has described me as a
great sensuah'st. He is mistaken. I am more candid
than others, and perhaps more voluptuous ; but I demand
also more refinement in my pleasures, and cannot sepa-
rate them from sentiment and affection ; and hypocrites
take advantage of my candour in this instance, as they
do in others. I own I have an extreme sense of the
pleasurable, but never unassociated with grace and with
the heart; and I as little partake of some of those
abuses of license, which coarse minds and narrow views
for society have rendered legitimate, as I do in the face-
making with which they are carried on. I have not even
a secret from those I love ; no, not one.
" Let the reader think what a state society must be in,
from the surprise which that confession alone will in-
voluntarily create in him.
" As to my person, I am dark and black-haired, almost
as a Creole ; and have nothing to boast of but a gentle-
manly carriage and a thoughtful face. Thought alone
rescues my face from insignificance ; but I must say it
has not the expression, nor the villainous lower jaw,
which the engraver in his ' hurry ' has given it in this
book."
To the last paragraph may be added his son's descrip-
tion : —
"He was rather tall, as straight as an aiTOW, and looked slenderer
than he really was. His hair was black and shining, and slightly
inclined to wave ; his head was high, his forehead straight and
white, his eyes black and sparkling, his general complexion dark.
CONCLUSION. 143
There was in his whole carriage and manner an extraordinary degree
of life."
And Carlyle's : —
" Dark complexion (a trace of the African, I believe) ; copious,
clean, strong, black hair ; beautifully-shaped head ; fine, beaming,
serious, hazel eyes ; seriousness and intellect the main expression ot
the face."
Such were the soul-convictions, and such the outward
seeming of the man who, pampered to priggishness in
boyhood, and by the malice of political enemies con-
firmed in his own conceit, was never weary of preaching
to his own generation the gospel of tolerance, charity,
and good-humour.
In some respects he required, and expected, a lenient
judgment towards himself, though his sympathies with
graceful, high-spirited vice did not involve the slightest
deviation in thought or deed from personal morality.
He presents at first sight a baffling combination of weak-
ness and strength, the result, as we have seen, of
inherent temperament. He could fight, without a
thought of possible consequences, in the school play-
ground, or in the arena of public life, against the two
vices he detested — meanness and cruelty ; but he never
fairly faced his own social responsibilities, or recognised
in such matters the importance of the final step from in-
tention to achievement. Troubles, largely of his own
making, it is admitted, and his bookworm tastes, made
him a trying daily companion, and he was far from an
144 .LEIGH HUNT.
ideal bread-winner or educator ; but the affections of all
who had once loved him, and they were many, seem to
have grown stronger with years. They went to him in
times of trouble, and their testimony is unvarying in its
enthusiasm.
The gallant cheerfulness with which he met real sorrows
unfortunately blinded him to the methods of preventing
their recurrence ; and he did not realise the practical
requirements of his day and generation. He cherished
a vague partiality for the old-world literary patron, the
cultured aristocrat, at once a friend and master to the
needy man of letters. Pending the appearance of this
obsolete being, he accepted, without hesitation, from any
friend who could afford it, that treacherous means of
temporary support, the loan without an expectation of
repayment which, had the opportunity arisen, he would
have bestowed on others with no ungrudging hand. The
perpetual inwardness of his point of view shut him out
from the ordinary lessons of experience, producing the
charming naivety and garrulous egoism of his writings,
but leading, in private life, to the acceptance of gushing
flattery from little men, which often made him ridiculous.
But he exhibited a true genius for friendship, and
attracted to himself many spirits nobler and wiser than
his own. It is in the reflected light of their memories
that his name most surely lives ; but it would be at once
ungenerous and unjust to spare no private niche in the
temple of fame for one so nearly connected with some of
our most precious literary associations, the chosen com-
rade of those who helped to bring in the dawn of a new
CONCLUSION. 145
century, who had his influence on their work, recognised
and proclaimed its significance, and displayed in his own
writings an independent and undeniable originality.
Hunt himself was never deceived concerning the
relative importance of his own work and theirs. Com-
plaining of Hallam for having put him "in juxta-
position with eminent men " (Shelley and Keats), " in
whose department " he did " not claim to be found, and
then dismissed him as not belonging to it," he thus
humbles himsdi {Tatler, August i, 1831): —
" There was scarcely anything in common with any one of us but
our affections, our zeal for mankind, and our love of the old poets.
Mr. Shelley was a Platonic philosopher of the acutest and loftiest
kind, poetizing. He came out of the school (if the word must be
used) of Plato and Qischylus. Mr. Keats was a poet of the school
of Spenser and Milton— places, indeed, which the third person in
question recommended and delighted in, but not in which he had
treasured a hopeless attempt at success. That person (if he may be
allowed in self-defence to characterise himself at all as a writer of
verse) came out of the lower forms of the narrative schools of
poetry, of which, perhaps, he might be called a run-away disciple,
sentimentalised — to move a tear with a verse is the highest poetical
triumph he can boast of. Generally speaking, he is something be-
tween poetry and prose, a compound of the love and wit of nature."
As usual his unerring instinct strikes the key-note.
He was poet, critic, essayist, and politician — senti-
mentalised. The affection for suburban detail, which
limited his genuine nature-worship, may be recognised
in his attitude towards life and art. He loved men
more than man, and beautiful lines or phrases above
K
146 LEIGH HUNT.
great books. In every direction his judgment was led
by sprightly feeling in submission to certain moral
principles.
By energy and fearless loyalty, involving the endur-
ance of something like martyrdom, he achieved a solid
service to the cause of Liberalism in one of its darkest
periods ; by persistent faithfulness to the " old masters "
in literature he materially assisted, though to some ex-
tent on lines of his own, the popularisation of taste and
information, which may be said to have begun in his age;
and by the exercise of independent critical judgment
he encouraged new leaders. Gratitude, therefore, should
teach us to forgive the undeniable shallowness of his in-
tellect, and the serious faults in style, which are too fre-
quently the result of his habitual indifference to the
formal conventions. He may gain our affections, as he
did those of his contemporaries, by the winning person-
ality, so far removed from the strenuousness of to-day,
that pervades every line he wrote, and finds its supreme
utterance in a few admirable verses, many felicitous
appreciations, and certain studies in the humorous-
pathetic that defy definition.
As I have said elsewhere, "his nature was essentially
romantic. His thoughts kept company with brave
knights and fair ladies, wandering in beautiful gardens
and exchanging tender compliments. The ceremonies
and customs that had grown archaic in the world of
action retained their full significance in his imagination,
and it was upon them that he delighted to dwell . . .
" His writings are the expression of his moral nature.
CONCLUSION. 147
They are genial, sympathetic, and chivalrous like him-