James Henry Leigh Hunt
(19 October 1784 –
28 August 1859) was an
English
critic, essayist, poet and writer.
Biography
Early life
Leigh Hunt
was born at Southgate,
London
, Middlesex
, where his parents had settled after leaving the
USA
. His
father, a lawyer from Philadelphia, and his mother, a merchant's
daughter and a devout
Quaker, had been forced
to come to Britain because of their loyalist sympathies during the
American War of
Independence. Hunt's father took
holy
orders, and became a popular preacher, but was unsuccessful in
obtaining a permanent living. Hunt's father was then employed by
James Brydges, 3rd
Duke of Chandos as tutor to his nephew, James Henry Leigh,
after whom Leigh Hunt was named.
Education
Leigh Hunt
was educated at Christ's
Hospital
from 1791 to
1799, a period which is detailed in his autobiography. He entered the school
shortly after Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Charles Lamb had both
left however Thomas Barnes was a schoolfriend of his. One of the
current boarding houses at Christ's Hospital is named after him. As
a boy, he was an ardent admirer of
Thomas
Gray and
William Collins,
writing many verses in imitation of them. A speech impediment,
later cured, prevented his going to university. "For some time
after I left school," he says, "I did nothing but visit my
school-fellows, haunt the book-stalls and write verses." His poems
were published in 1801 under the title of
Juvenilia, and
introduced him into literary and theatrical society. He began to
write for the newspapers, and published in 1807 a volume of
theatre criticism, and a series of
Classic Tales with critical essays on the authors.
Newspapers
The Examiner
In 1808 he
left the War
Office
, where he had been working as a clerk, to become
editor of the Examiner, a
newspaper founded by his brother, John. This journal soon acquired a
reputation for unusual political independence; it would attack any
worthy target, "from a principle of taste," as
John Keats expressed it.
In 1813, an attack on
the Prince Regent,
based on substantial truth,
resulted in prosecution and a sentence of two years' imprisonment
for each of the brothers — Leigh Hunt served his term at the
Surrey County
Gaol
. Leigh Hunt's visitors in prison included
Lord Byron, John Moore,
Lord
Brougham and others, whose acquaintance influenced his later
career. The stoicism with which Leigh Hunt bore his imprisonment
attracted general attention and sympathy.
The Reflector
In 1810-1811 he edited a quarterly magazine, the
Reflector, for his brother John. He wrote "The Feast of
the Poets" for this, a
satire, which offended
many contemporary poets, particularly
William Gifford of the
Quarterly.
The essays afterwards published under the title of the
Round
Table (2 volumes, 1816–1817), jointly with
William Hazlitt, appeared in the
Examiner.
Poetry
In 1816 he made a mark in English literature with the publication
of
Story of Rimini. Hunt's preference was decidedly for
Chaucer's verse style, as adapted
to the
Modern English by
John Dryden, in opposition to the epigrammatic
couplet of
Alexander Pope which had
superseded it. The poem is an optimistic narrative which runs
contrary to the tragic nature of its subject. Hunt's flippancy and
familiarity, often degenerating into the ludicrous, subsequently
made him a target for ridicule and parody.
In 1818 appeared a collection of poems entitled
Foliage,
followed in 1819 by
Hero and Leander, and
Bacchies and
Ariadne. In the same year he reprinted these two works with
The Story of Rimini and
The Descent of Liberty
with the title of
Poetical Works, and started the
Indicator, in which some of his best work appeared. Both
Keats and
Shelley belonged to
the circle gathered around him at Hampstead, which also included
William Hazlitt,
Charles Lamb,
Bryan Procter,
Benjamin Haydon,
Charles Cowden Clarke,
C.W. Dilke,
Walter Coulson and
John Hamilton Reynolds.
Friend: Keats and Shelley
He had for some years been married to
Marianne Kent. His own affairs were in
confusion, and only Shelley's generosity saved him from ruin. In
return he showed sympathy to Shelley during the latter's domestic
distresses, and defended him in the
Examiner. He
introduced Keats to Shelley and wrote a very generous appreciation
of him in the
Indicator. Keats seems, however, to have
subsequently felt that Hunt's example as a poet had been in some
respects detrimental to him.
After Shelley's departure for Italy in 1818, Leigh Hunt became even
poorer, and the prospects of political reform less satisfactory.
Both his health and his wife's failed, and he was obliged to
discontinue the
Indicator (1819–1821), having, he says,
"almost died over the last numbers." Shelley suggested that Hunt go
to Italy with him and Byron to establish a quarterly magazine in
which
Liberal opinions could be advocated
with more freedom than was possible at home. An injudicious
suggestion, it would have done little for Hunt or the Liberal cause
at the best, and depended entirely upon the co-operation of the
capricious, parsimonious Byron. Byron's principal motive for
agreeing appears to have been the expectation of acquiring
influence over the
Examiner, and he was mortified to
discover that Hunt was no longer interested in the "Examiner".
Leigh Hunt left England for Italy in November 1821, but storm,
sickness and misadventure retarded his arrival until
1 July 1822, a rate of progress
which
Thomas Love Peacock
appropriately compares to the navigation of
Ulysses.
The death of Shelley, a few weeks later, destroyed every prospect
of success for the
Liberal. Hunt was now virtually
dependent upon Byron, who did not relish the idea of being patron
to Hunt's large and troublesome family. Byron's friends also
scorned Hunt.
The Liberal lived through four
quarterly numbers, containing contributions no less memorable than
Byron's "Vision of Judgment"
and Shelley's translations from Faust; but in 1823 Byron sailed for Greece
, leaving
Hunt at Genoa
to shift for
himself. The Italian climate and manners, however, were
entirely to Hunt's taste, and he protracted his residence until
1825, producing in the interim
Ultra-Crepidarius: a Satire on
William Gifford (1823), and his matchless translation (1825)
of
Francesco Redi's
Bacco in
Toscana.
In 1825 a litigation with his brother brought him back to England,
and in 1828 he published
Lord Byron and some of his
Contemporaries, a corrective to idealized portraits of Byron.
The public was shocked that Hunt, who had been obliged to Byron for
so much, would "bite the hand that fed him" in this way. Hunt
especially writhed under the withering satire of Moore. For many
years afterwards, the history of Hunt's life is a painful struggle
with poverty and sickness. He worked unremittingly, but one effort
failed after another. Two journalistic ventures, the
Tatler (1830–1832), a daily devoted to literary and
dramatic criticism, and Leigh Hunt's
London Journal
(1834–1835), were discontinued for want of subscribers, although
the latter contained some of his best writing. His editorship
(1837–1838) of the
Monthly
Repository, in which he succeeded
William Johnson Fox, was also
unsuccessful. The adventitious circumstances which allowed the
Examiner to succeed no longer existed, and Hunt's
personality was unsuited to the general body of readers.
In 1832 a collected edition of his poems was published by
subscription, the list of subscribers including many of his
opponents. In the same year was printed for private circulation
Christianism, the work afterwards published (1853) as
The Religion of the Heart. A copy sent to
Thomas Carlyle secured his friendship, and
Hunt went to live next door to him in Cheyne Row in 1833.
Sir
Ralph Esher, a romance of
Charles II's period, had a success,
and
Captain Sword and Captain Pen (1835), a spirited
contrast between the victories of peace and the victories of war,
deserves to be ranked among his best poems. In 1840 his
circumstances were improved by the successful representation at
Covent Garden of his play
Legend of Florence.
Lover's
Amazements, a comedy, was acted several years afterwards, and
was printed in Leigh Hunt's
Journal (1850–1851); other
plays remained in manuscript. In 1840 he wrote introductory notices
to the work of
Sheridan
and to
Edward Moxon's edition of the
works of
William Wycherley,
William Congreve,
John Vanbrugh and
George Farquhar, a work which furnished the
occasion of
Macaulay's
essay on the Dramatists of the Restoration. The narrative poem
The Palfrey was published in 1842.
More financial difficulties
The time of Hunt's greatest difficulties was between 1834 and 1840.
He was at times in absolute poverty, and his distress was
aggravated by domestic complications. By Macaulay's recommendation
he began to write for the
Edinburgh
Review. In 1844
Mary Shelley
and her son, on succeeding to the family estates, settled an
annuity of £120 upon
Hunt (Rossetti 1890); and in 1847
Lord John Russell procured
him a pension of £200. Now living in improved comfort, Hunt
published the companion books,
Imagination and Fancy
(1844), and
Wit and Humour (1846), two volumes of
selections from the English poets, which displayed his refined,
discriminating critical tastes. His book on the pastoral poetry of
Sicily,
A Jar of Honey from Mount
Hybla (1848), is also delightful.
The Town (2 vols.,
1848) and
Men, Women and Books (2 vols., 1847) are partly
made up from former material.
The Old Court Suburb (2
vols., 1855; ed.
A Dobson, 2002) is a sketch of Kensington
, where he long resided. In 1850 he published
his
Autobiography (3 vols.), a naive and affected, but
accurate, piece of self-portraiture.
A Book for a Corner
(2 vols.) was published in 1849, and his
Table Talk
appeared in 1851. In 1855 his narrative poems, original and
translated, were collected under the title
Stories in
Verse.
He died in Putney
on the
28 August 1859, and is buried at Kensal Green
Cemetery
. In September 1966 Christ's Hospital named
one of its Houses in memory of him.
Leigh Hunt was the original of Harold Skimpole in
Bleak House. "Dickens wrote in a letter of
25 September 1853, 'I suppose he is the most exact portrait that
was ever painted in words! . . . It is an absolute reproduction of
a real man'; and a contemporary critic commented, 'I recognized
Skimpole instantaneously; . . . and so did every person whom I
talked with about it who had ever had Leigh Hunt's acquaintance.'"
G. K. Chesterton suggested that Dickens "may
never once have had the unfriendly thought, 'Suppose Hunt behaved
like a rascal!'; he may have only had the fanciful thought,
'Suppose a rascal behaved like Hunt!'" (Chesterton 1906).
Other works
- Amyntas, A Tale of the Woods (1820), a translation of
Tasso's Aminta
- The Seer, or Common-Places refreshed (2 pts.,
1840–1841)
- three of the Canterbury
Tales in The Poems of Geoffrey Chaucer modernized
(1841)
- Stories from the Italian Poets (1846)
- compilations such as One Hundred Romances of Real Life
(1843)
- selections from Beaumont and Fletcher (1855)
- with S Adams Lee, The Book of the Sonnet (Boston,
1867).
His
Poetical Works (2 vols.), revised by himself and
edited by Lee, were printed at Boston in 1857, and an edition
(London and New York) by his son, Thornton Hunt, appeared in 1860.
Among volumes of selections are:
Essays (1887), ed. A
Symons;
Leigh Hunt as Poet and Essayist (1889), ed. C
Kent;
Essays and Poems (1891), ed. RB Johnson for the
"Temple Library."
His
Autobiography was revised shortly before his death,
and edited (1859) by his son
Thornton
Hunt, who also arranged his Correspondence (2 vols., 1862).
Additional letters were printed by the Cowden Clarkes in their
Recollections of Writers (1878). The
Autobiography was edited (2 vols., 1903) with full
bibliographical note by
R Ingpen. A
bibliography of his works was compiled by
Alexander Ireland (
List of the
Writings of William Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt, 1868). There are
short lives of Hunt by
Cosmo
Monkhouse ("Great Writers," 1893) and by RB Johnson (1896).
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Volume 28 (2004).
References
- Cox, Jeffrey N., Poetry and Politics in the Cockney School:
Keats, Shelley, Hunt and their Circle. Cambridge University
Press, 1999. ISBN 978-0521631006
- Eberle-Sinatra, Michael, Leigh Hunt and the London Literary
Scene: A Reception History of His Major Works, 1805-1828.
Routledge, 2005.
- Holden, Anthony, The Wit in the Dungeon: The Life of Leigh
Hunt. Little, Brown, 2005. ISBN 978-0316859271
- Lulofs, Timothy J. and Ostrom, Hans, Leigh Hunt: A
Reference Guide. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1985. ISBN
978-0415316767
- Roe, Nicholas, Fiery Heart: The First Life of Leigh
Hunt. Pimlico, 2005. ISBN 978-0712602242
Notes
- Roe, Nicholas. "'The Hunt Era': Jeffrey N. Cox, Poetry and
Politics in the Cockney School: Keats, Shelley, Hunt and their
Circle and The Examiner, 1818–1822, introduced by Yasuo Deguchi."
Romanticism On the Net 14 (May 1999). Accessed
19 December
2006.
- Page, Norman, editor, Bleak House, Penguin Books, 1971, p.955
(note 2 to Chapter 6).
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