289.-To John Murray.

April 21, 1813.

DEAR SIR,-I shall be in town by Sunday next, and will call and have some conversation on the subject of Westall's proposed designs. I am to sit to him for a picture at the request of a friend of mine;1 and as Sanders's is not a good one, you will probably prefer the other. I wish you to have Sanders's taken down and sent to my lodgings immediately-before my arrival. I hear that a certain malicious publication on Waltzing 2 is attributed to me. This report, I suppose, you will take care to contradict, as the Author, I am sure, will not like that I should wear his cap and bells. Mr. Hobhouse's quarto will be out immediately; pray send to the author for an early copy which I wish to take abroad with me. Dear Sir, I am, yours very truly,

B.

P.S.-I see the Examiner 3 threatens some observations upon you next week. What can you have done to share the wrath which has heretofore been principally expended upon the Prince? I presume all your Scribleri will be drawn up in battle array in defence of the modern Tonson-Mr. Bucke, for instance.

1. This picture, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1815, is now in the possession of the Baroness Burdett-Coutts.

2. Byron's Waltz was published anonymously in the spring of 1813, not, apparently, by Murray, but by Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, Paternoster Row.

3. In the Examiner for April, 1813, occurs the paragraph: "A "word or two on Mr. Murray's (the 'splendid bookseller') judg 'ment in the Fine Arts-next week, if room."

4. Charles Bucke (1781-1846), a voluminous writer of verse, plays, and miscellaneous subjects, published, in 1813, his Philosophy of Nature; or, the Influence of Scenery on the Mind and Heart. He supported himself by his pen, and that indifferently. Byron seems

1813.]

SAILING IN MAY.

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Send in my account to Bennet Street, as I wish to settle it before sailing..

to suggest that he was a dependent of Murray's. In 1817 he sent to the Committee of Management at Drury Lane his tragedy, The Italians; or, the Fatal Accusation, and it was accepted. In February, 1819, he withdrew the play, in consequence of a quarrel with Edmund Kean, and published it with extracts from the correspondence and a Preface, which sent it through numerous editions. The play itself was, after being withdrawn, played at Drury Lane, April 3, 1819. Bucke and his Preface were answered in The Assailant Assailed, and in A Defence of Edmund Kean, Esq. (both in 1819), and the opinion of the town condemned both him and his tragedy.

CHAPTER VII.

MAY, 1813 DECEMBER, 1813.

THE GIAOUR AND BRIDE OF ABYDOS.

290.-To John Murray.

May 13, 1813.

DEAR SIR,-I send a corrected, and, I hope, amended copy of the lines for the "fragment" already sent this evening.1 Let the enclosed be the copy that is sent to the Devil (the printers) and burn the other.

Yours, etc.,

BN.

291.-To Thomas Moore.

May 19, 1813.

Oh you, who in all names can tickle the town, Anacreon, Tom Little, Tom Moore, or Tom Brown,2For hang me if I know of which you may most brag, Your Quarto two-pounds, or your Twopenny Post Bag;

But now to my letter-to yours 'tis an answer-
To-morrow be with me, as soon as you can, sir,

1. The Giaour, which was now in the press, was expanded, either in the course of printing, or in the successive editions, from 400 lines to 1400. It was published in May, 1813.

2. Moore's Intercepted Letters, or the Twopenny Post-bag. By Thomas Brown, the Younger, was published in 1813.

All ready and dress'd for proceeding to spunge on (According to compact) the wit in the dungeon

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1. The "wit in the dungeon" was James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), who was educated at Christ's Hospital, and began his literary life with "a collection of poems, written between the ages "of twelve and sixteen," and published in 1801 as Juvenilia. In 1808 he and his brother John started a weekly newspaper called the Examiner, which advocated liberal principles with remarkable independence. On February 24, 1811, Hunt published an article in defence of Peter Finnerty, convicted for a libel on Castlereagh, and exhorting public writers to be bold in the cause of individual liberty. The same number contained an article on the savagery of military floggings, for which he was prosecuted, defended by Brougham, and acquitted. His acquittal drew from Shelley a letter of congratulation, addressed to Hunt as 'one of the most fearless enlighteners of the public mind" (Dowden's Life of Shelley, vol. i. p. 113).

In March, 1812, the Morning Post printed a poem, speaking of the Prince Regent as the "Maecenas of the Age," the "Exciter of "Desire," the "Glory of the People," an "Adonis of Loveliness," etc. The Examiner for March 12, 1812, thus translated this adulation into "the language of truth:" "What person, unacquainted "with the true state of the case, would imagine, in reading these astounding eulogies, that this 'Glory of the People' was the 46 subject of millions of shrugs and reproaches!... that this "Exciter of Desire' (bravo! Messieurs of the Post!), this Adonis "in Loveliness,' was a corpulent man of fifty!-in short, this "delightful, blissful, wise, pleasureable, honourable, virtuous, true, "and immortal prince was a violator of his word, a libertine over "head and ears in disgrace, a despiser of domestic ties, the companion of gamblers and demireps, a man who has just closed half "a century without one single claim on the gratitude of his country "or the respect of posterity."

66

Crabb Robinson, who met Leigh Hunt, four days later, at Charles Lamb's, says (Diary, vol. i. p. 376), "Leigh Hunt is an enthusiast, "very well intentioned, and, I believe, prepared for the worst. "He said, pleasantly enough, No one can accuse me of not writing "a libel. Everything is a libel, as the law is now declared, and our "security lies only in their shame."" For this libel John and Leigh Hunt were convicted in the Court of King's Bench on December 9, 1812. In the following February they were sentenced to two years' imprisonment and a fine of £500 a-piece. John was imprisoned in Coldbath-fields, Leigh in the Surrey County Gaol. They were released on February 2 or 3, 1815.

Shelley, on reading the sentence, proposed a subscription for "the brave and enlightened man to whom the public owes a "debt as the champion of their liberties and virtues" (Dowden, Life of Shelley, vol. i. p. 325). Keats wrote a sonnet to Hunt on the day he left his prison, beginning

Pray Phoebus at length our political malice

May not get us lodgings within the same palace!

"What though for showing truth to flatter'd state,
Kind Hunt was shut in prison."

A political alliance was thus cemented, which, for the time, was disastrous to the literary prospects of Shelley and Keats. To Hunt Shelley dedicated the Cenci, and Keats his first volume of Poems (1817). He is the "gentlest of the wise" in Shelley's Adonais; and, in a suppressed stanza of the same poem, the poet speaks of Hunt's "sweet and earnest looks," "soft smiles," and "dark and "night-like eyes." The words inscribed on Shelley's tomb-" Cor "Cordium "-were Hunt's choice. In his various papers Hunt zealously championed his friends. In the Examiner for September to October, 1819, he defended Shelley's personal character; in the same paper for June to July, 1817, he praised Keats's first volume of Poems; he reviewed "Lamia" in the Indicator for August 2-9, 1820, and "La Belle Dame sans Merci" in that for May 10, 1820. In his Foliage (1818) are three sonnets addressed to Keats.

Shelley believed in Hunt to the end. It was mainly through him that Hunt came to Pisa in June, 1822, to join with Byron in The Liberal. But he doubted whether the alliance between the wren "and the eagle" could continue (Life of Shelley, vol. ii. p. 519). Keats, on the other hand, lost his faith in Hunt. In a letter to Haydon (May, 1817), speaking of Hunt, he says, "There is no greater Sin after the seven deadly than to flatter oneself into an "idea of being a great Poet." Again (March, 1818) he writes, "It is a great Pity that People should, by associating themselves "with the finest things, spoil them. Hunt has damned Hampstead, "and masks, and sonnets, and Italian tales." He writes still more severely (December, 1818-January, 1819), "If I were to follow "my own inclinations, I should never meet any one of that set "again, not even Hunt, who is certainly a pleasant fellow in the "main when you are with him; but in reality he is vain, egotistical, "and disgusting in matters of taste and morals. Hunt does one "harm by making fine things petty, and beautiful things hateful. "Through him I am indifferent to Mozart. I care not for white "Busts-and many a glorious thing when associated with him "becomes a nothing." Haydon considered that Hunt was the "great unhinger" of Keats's best dispositions (Works of Keats, ed. H. B. Forman, vol. iv. p. 359); and Severn attributes Keats's temporary mawkishness to Hunt's society (ibid., p. 376).

Nathaniel Hawthorne (Our Old Home, p. 229, ed. 1884) says of Hunt, and means it as high praise, that "there was not an English "trait in him from head to foot-morally, intellectually, or physically. "Beef, ale or stout, brandy or port-wine, entered not at all into his "composition." He was, in fact, a man of weak fibre, who allowed himself to sponge upon his friends, such as Talfourd, Haydon, and Shelley. Though Dickens denied (All the Year Round, Dec. 24, 1859)