Shelley

Finnerty Case—Correspondence of Hunt and Shelley—Their Political and Religious Sympathy—Hunt’s Defense of Shelley—Hunt’s Italian Journey—Shelley’s Death—Hunt’s Criticism—Literary Influence—Shelley’s Estimate of Hunt.

The friendship of Shelley and Leigh Hunt is the simple story of an intimacy founded on a common endowment of independence of thought and of capacity for self-sacrifice. Although both were sensitive and shrinking by nature, and preferred to dwell in an isolated world of books and dreams, yet for the sake of abstract principles and for love of humanity, both expended much time and endured much pain in the arena of public strife.

In The Examiners of February 18 and 24, 1811, appeared articles by Hunt on the Finnerty case. Peter Finnerty, Hunt’s successor as editor of The Statesman, had been prosecuted and imprisoned on the charge of libelling Lord Castlereagh. Hunt’s defense drew Shelley’s attention to the case and may have inspired him, it has been suggested, to write his Political Essay on the Existing State of Things. The proceeds went to Finnerty.[211] On March 2 Shelley subscribed to the Finnerty fund and, on the same day, wrote Hunt, whom he had never met, a letter from Oxford, congratulating him on his acquittal from a third charge of libel and proposing that an association should be formed to establish “rational liberty,” to resist the enemies of justice, and to protect each other.[212]Shelley’s political creed was, in the main, that of William Godwin, with an admixture of Holbach, Volney and Rousseau at first hand.[213] In English philosophic literature he knew Berkeley, Hume, Reid and Locke. His watchword was the cry of the French Revolution, liberty, equality and fraternity, to be gained, not by violence and bloodshed, but by a steady and unyielding resistance of the masses against the corrupt institutions of church and state. Like Godwin, he believed man capable of his own redemption and, with tradition and tyranny overthrown and reason and nature enthroned, he hoped for universal justice and ultimate perfectibility of mankind. His poetry and his prose represent a development from the impassioned and imaginative enthusiasm of an uncompromising youth, who would single-handed revolutionize the world in the twinkling of an eye, to the saner hope of a man who took somewhat into account the necessarily gradual nature of ethical evolution. His chief fallacy lay in the failure to recognize evil as an inherent force in human nature and to acknowledge sect and state, to which he attributed the origin of all error, as inventions of man’s ingenuity. Neither did he perceive the necessity of certain restrictions on the individual for the preservation of law and order. He believed in no distinctions of rank except those based on individual talent and virtue. He wrote in 1811: “I am no aristocrat, nor ‘crat’ at all, but vehemently long for the time when men may dare to live in accordance with Nature and Reason—in consequence with Virtue, to which I firmly believe that Religion and its establishments, Polity and its establishments, are the formidable though destructible barriers.”[214] Shelley knew of Leigh Hunt first as a political writer of considerable importance. In this respect he never ceased to admire him or to be influenced by The Examiner in the campaign against government corruption. Yet his own equipment of mind and training, visionary as his theories seem, gave him a power of speculation and grasp of situation that ignored the limitations of time and space, while Hunt, with his narrower view, never got beyond the petty and immediate details of one nation or of one age.

The social improvements which Shelley advocated were Catholic Emancipation, brought about later, as has been pointed out by Symonds, by the very means which Shelley foresaw and prophesied; reform of parliamentary representation[215] similar to that carried into effect in 1832, 1867 and 1882; freedom of the press[216] and repeal of the union of Great Britain and Ireland; the abolition of capital punishment and of war.[217] During the fourteen years of Hunt’s editorship, among the reforms for which he fought in The Examiner were the first three of these measures. He denounced capital punishment and war in the same paper and later in his poem Captain Sword and Captain Pen.[218]

Shelley’s moral code was based on an idealized sense of justice, and was a kind of “natural piety.”[219] With one marked exception, he seems to have been true to the pursuit of it, both in his standards of conduct and in his relations with others. His life was a model of generosity, purity of thought, and unselfish devotion. Hunt reported Shelley as having said: “What a divine religion might be found out, if charity were really the principle of it, instead of faith.”[220] He was atheist only in the sense of discarding the dogmas of theology and of superstition, and in his spirit of scientific inquiry. He did not deny the existence in nature of an all-pervading spirit. Hunt thought the popular misconception of Shelley’s opinions was due to his misapplication of the names of the Deity and to his identification of them with vulgar superstitions. Of Shelley’s attitude he wrote: “His want of faith in the letter, and his exceeding faith in the spirit of Christianity, formed a comment, the one on the other, very formidable to those who chose to forget what Scripture itself observes on that point.”[221] Whether or not Shelley believed in immortality is still a vexed question and is likely to remain so, since he had not reached convictions sufficiently stable to permit a formal statement on his part. Many of the passages in Adonais would lead one to believe that he did; certainly he did, like Hunt, cling to the idea of the persistence, in some form or other, of the good and the beautiful. The close conformity of their views is seen in the latter’s two sonnets in Foliage[222] addressed to Shelley, where the poet condemns the degrading notions so prevalent concerning the Deity and celebrates the Spirit of Beauty and Goodness in all things. But, in religion as in politics, Shelley was bolder and more speculative than Hunt.

The fine of £1,000 and imprisonment of the Hunt brothers in 1813 drew from Shelley a vehement protest. In a letter to Hogg[223] he lamented the inadequacy of Lord Brougham’s defense and fairly boiled with indignation at “the horrible injustice and tyranny of the sentence” and pronounced Hunt “a brave, a good, and an enlightened man.” He started a subscription with twenty pounds, and later he must have offered to pay the entire fine, for Hunt recorded in his Autobiography that Shelley had made him “a princely offer,”[224] which he declined, as he did not need it. The offer was actuated solely by a hatred of oppression, for the two men had little or no personal knowledge of each other at the time.

It is impossible to decide the exact date of their first meeting. Hunt says that it took place before the indictment for libel on the Prince Regent.[225] This evidence would make it fall sometime between March, 1812, the date of Shelley’s letter mentioned above, and February, 1813, the beginning of the incarceration. But a letter from Shelley to Hunt dated December 7, 1813, demanding if he had made the statement that Milton had died an atheist, from its very formal tone, leads one to believe that they had not met up to that time and that Hunt, writing from memory many years afterwards, made a mistake. Thornton Hunt gives as the immediate cause of the two men coming together, Shelley’s application to Mr. Rowland Hunter, the publisher and stepfather of Mrs. Hunt, for advice regarding the publication of a poem. He referred Shelley to Leigh Hunt. The next meeting was in Surrey Street Gaol. Thornton Hunt, in a delightful reminiscence of Shelley,[226] says that he had no recollection of him among his father’s visitors in prison, but he remembered perfectly the latter’s description of his “angelic” appearance, his classic thoughts, and his dreams for the emancipation of mankind. The real intimacy began after Shelley’s return from the continent in 1816 when Shelley, in search of a house before he settled at Marlow, was the guest of Hunt at Hampstead during a part of December.[227] A close companionship followed uninterruptedly for two years until Shelley went to Italy, and there are recorded in the letters and journals of each many pleasant evenings at Hampstead and at Marlow, filled with poetry and music, with talks on art and trials of wit, with dinners and theater parties. Mary Shelley and Mrs. Hunt became as great friends as their husbands.

When Harriet committed suicide and Shelley went up to London to institute proceedings for possession of their children, Hunt remained constantly with him and gave him as much sympathy and support as it is possible for one fellow-being to extend to another whom all the world has deserted.[228] He attended the Chancery suit and stated Shelley’s position in The Examiner.[229] This sympathy and support, given Shelley in his hour of greatest need and desolation, have never been sufficiently valued in a comparative estimate of the relative indebtedness of the two men. If Shelley gave freely of his money, Hunt, devoid of worldly goods, gave unstintingly, to the detriment of his reputation, of those things which money cannot purchase. That he incurred the displeasure of men in power, and ran the risk of being misunderstood by the public in befriending Shelley, did not deter him for an instant.

During 1817 Shelley made the acquaintance, through Hunt, of the Cockney circle, including Keats, Reynolds, Hazlitt, Brougham, Novello and Horace Smith. The last-named became one of Shelley’s most trusted friends.[230] These new friends enlarged his list of acquaintances considerably, for up to this time he seems to have had no friends except Godwin, Hogg and Peacock.

In the early spring of 1818, the Shelleys went to Italy, melancholy with the thought of separation from the Hunts.[231] The letters from Shelley to Hunt during the next four years form an important part of Shelley’s correspondence.

The part played by Shelley in the invitation extended to Hunt to join Lord Byron and himself in Italy and to become one of the editors of a periodical will be treated minutely in the next chapter. It is sufficient here to say that he was actuated by a desire to better Hunt’s finances and to enjoy his society—a pleasure he had been pining for ever since they had been separated, and, in case of a return to England, regarded as the one joy “among all the other sources of regret and discomfort with which England abounds for me.... Shaking hands with you is worth all the trouble; the rest is clear loss.”[232] Further, he knew that Hunt longed for Italy, and he wished to help Byron in the cause of liberalism. To bring both ends about, he shouldered a burden that he was ill able to bear. An annuity of £200 for the support of his two children, an annuity of £100 to Peacock, perpetual demand for large sums from Godwin, occasional assistance rendered the Gisbornes, partial support of Jane Claremont, loans to Byron, and the support of his family, were the drains already upon him—met, in the main by money raised on post obits at half value.

The amount of Hunt’s indebtedness to Shelley can be estimated only approximately. The first reference to a financial transaction between them after the “princely offer”[233] is to be found in Mary Shelley’s letter of December 6, 1816, in which she wondered that Hunt had not acknowledged the “receipt of so large a sum.” Professor Dowden thinks this may be an allusion to Shelley’s response to an appeal for the poor of Spitalfields which had appeared in The Examiner five days previously.[234] Shelley’s offers to Hunt to borrow £100 from Byron[235] and to stand security for a loan from Charles Cowden Clarke,[236] and an attempt to borrow from Samuel Rogers[237] are not developed by any further facts, but it is necessary to take note of them in a general estimate. Before leaving England, Shelley arranged with Ollier for a loan of £100 for Hunt, a debt which was later liquidated by the sale of the Literary Pocket Book.[238] At some time before leaving England, Shelley also gave Hunt in one year £1,400[239] for the liquidation of his debts, which money was, Medwin says, borrowed from Horace Smith.[240] Unfortunately for Shelley, the sum was insufficient to extricate Hunt from his difficulties. Miss Mitford gives the amount as £1,500, instead of £1,400, and adds that Shelley’s furniture and bedding were swept off to pay Hunt’s creditors;[241] the inaccuracy of the first statement and the lack of any evidence to support the second, lead one to doubt the story. But it is true that Shelley’s income at the time was only £1,000. Even when so far away as Italy, Hunt’s money troubles weighed heavily upon Shelley in a continual regret that he could not set him entirely free from his creditors;[242] he feared that the incredible exertions Hunt was making on The Indicator and on The Examiner, and the privations that he endured, would undermine his health.[243] When Hunt finally decided to go to Italy, Shelley assumed, as a matter of course, the chief responsibility of providing the means.

As early as 1818, when Shelley and Byron met in Venice, the matter of the journal was discussed between them and broached to Hunt. December 22, 1818, Shelley wrote him that Byron wished him to come to Italy and that, if money considerations prevented, Byron would lend him £400 or £500. He added that Hunt should not feel uncomfortable in accepting the offer, as it was frankly made, and that his society would give Byron pleasure and service.[244] Hunt does not seem to have seriously considered the proposition, for there are few references to it in his correspondence of this year. On the renewal of the plan in 1821, Shelley would never have called on Byron for assistance for Hunt if he himself could have provided otherwise, for his opinion of Byron had changed in the meantime.[245] January 25, 1822, Shelley sent £150 for the expenses of the voyage, “within 30 or 40 pounds of what I have contrived to scrape together”;[246] and again on February 23, £250,[247] borrowed with security from Byron. Yet Shelley’s own exchequer at the time was so low that Mary Shelley wrote in the spring: “We are drearily behindhand with money at present. Hunt and our furniture has swallowed up more than our savings.”[248] On April 10 Shelley stated that he was trying to finish Charles the First in order that he might earn £100 for Hunt.

In round numbers it may be calculated that the sum total of Hunt’s indebtedness, exclusive of the yearly bequest of £120 paid by Shelley’s son, was about £2,500, a very large sum in the light of Shelley’s limited resources and other obligations. But it was as ungrudgingly given as it was graciously received. Between the two men there was no distinction of meum and tuum. More remarkable still, Mary Shelley gave as willingly as her husband. If one is inclined to marvel at such an unusual state of affairs, it must be recalled that both men were under the spell of William Godwin’s theories of community of property. Shelley gave as his duty and Hunt received as his due. That the effort involved much deprivation and distress of mind on the part of the giver mars the justice of acceptance by the recipient, retrieved only in part by the belief that Hunt probably did not know the full extent of Shelley’s sacrifice, and the knowledge that the former would gladly have endured as much if the conditions had been reversed. The element of self-sacrifice and delicacy on the part of Shelley in concealing it, in after years only added to the beauty of the gift in Hunt’s eyes, and even at the time he cannot be accused of indifference.[249] Jeaffreson makes the absurd suggestion that Shelley gave the money as a bribe to the editor of a powerful and flourishing literary journal.[250] He thinks dodging creditors was a strong bond of mutual interest between the two men. There is evidence that Hunt was in difficulty at the time and that Shelley left a surgeon’s bill unpaid,[251] but there is no proof extant of deliberate mutual protection. On the contrary, it is most unlikely.

The Hunts sailed from England in November, 1821, and reached Leghorn nearly nine months after first setting out on a voyage which, in its delays and dangers, Byron compared to the “periplus of Hanno the Carthaginian, and with much the same speed”;[252] Peacock to that of Ulysses.[253] Of Shelley’s suggestion to make the trip by sea, Hunt wrote: “if he had recommended a balloon, I should have been inclined to try it.”[254] Hogg, with his characteristic humour, remarked that a journey by land would have taken equally long, since Hunt would have stopped to gather all the daisies by the wayside from Paris to Pisa. Both men looked forward to many years together[255] and Shelley, in his letter of welcome, wrote that wind and waves parted them no more,[256] an assertion which now sounds like a knell of doom. From Leghorn Shelley conveyed the party to Pisa and installed them in the lower floor of Byron’s dwelling, the Lanfranchi Palace.[257] To Shelley fell the difficult task of keeping Lord Byron in heart for the new undertaking and of reviving Hunt’s drooping spirits. Hunt’s funds were all gone and in their place was a debt of sixty crowns. The next few days were full of grave anxiety and foreboding for the future, broken only by a delightful Sunday spent in seeing the Cathedral and the Tower. Of this day Hunt wrote: “Good God! what a day was that, compared with all that have followed it! I had my friend with me, arm-in-arm, after a separation of years: he was looking better than I had ever seen him—we talked of a thousand things—we anticipated a thousand pleasures.”[258] Then came the fatal Monday with its shipwreck of many hopes—in its tragic sequel too well known to need repetition here. Hunt’s last services to his friend were his assistance rendered at the cremation and his contribution of the now famous Latin epitaph “cor cordium.”[259]

With Shelley perished Hunt’s chief hope in life; in the opinion of his son, he was never the same man again. In 1832, at his period of darkest depression, he wrote: “If you ask me how it is that I bear all this, I answer, that I love nature and books, and think well of the capabilities of human kind. I have known Shelley, I have known my mother.”[260] In 1844 he claimed as his proudest title, the “Friend of Shelley.”[261]The first printed notice of Shelley was in The Examiner of December 1, 1816. Therefore to Hunt belongs in this case, as in that of Keats, the credit of discovery. It is difficult to account for Hunt’s tardiness of recognition,[262] coming as it did six years after Shelley first wrote him, five years after the Finnerty poem, three years after Queen Mab, and two years after the visit in prison.[263] Also Shelley had sent contributions to The Examiner, which Hunt had not accepted, but which he vaguely recalled at the time of writing his first review on Shelley. It was inspired by the announcement of Alastor, and consisted of about ten lines, embodied in the article on Keats and Reynolds already referred to. Hunt pronounced Shelley “a very striking and original thinker.” Shelley’s reply to a letter from Hunt, telling him of the notice, pictures him anxiously scouring the countryside about Bath for the sight of a copy and buoyed up at last by the news of one five miles distant.

This notice was followed by the publication of the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty in The Examiner of January 19, 1817; a notice of the Chancery suit, January 26 and February 2; and an extract from Laon and Cythna, November 30. A review of the Revolt of Islam ran through three numbers, January 25, February 8 and 22, 1818. Shelley’s system of charity and his crusade against tyranny, as set forth in the preface, Hunt loudly applauded. Many extracts were italicized for the guidance of the public. The beauties of the poem were pronounced to be its mysticism, its wildness, its depth of sentiment, its grandeur of imagery, and its varied and sweet versification. In the boldness of speculation and in the love of virtue Hunt saw a resemblance to Lucretius, while in the gloom and imagination of certain passages, particularly in the grandeur of the supernatural architecture, he was reminded of Dante. The defects were pronounced to be obscurity of narrative and sameness of image and metaphor. The review closed with the prophecy “we have no doubt he is destined to be one of the leading spirits of the age.”The Quarterly Review of May, 1818, accused Shelley[264] of atheism and of dissolute conduct in private life; the same journal of April, 1819, reviewing the Revolt of Islam on the basis of the suppressed version of Laon and Cythna, though it did not fail to appreciate the genius and beauty of the poem, charged Shelley with a predilection for incest and with a frantic dislike for Christianity. It called the support of The Examiner “the sweet undersong of the weekly journal.”[265] The two attacks were met by a strong protest from Hunt,[266] particularly in regard to the part dealing with Shelley’s life. He denied the propriety of such discussion in public criticism and declared that he had never known Shelley to “deviate, notwithstanding his theories, even into a single action which those who differ with him might think blameable.” His life at Marlow was described as spent in “beautiful charity and generosity” and was likened to that of Plato. In 1821 an attack on Shelley by Hazlitt was met by an angry warning from Hunt and a threat to become his public enemy, if the offense were repeated.[267] Hunt’s reason for taking this defensive attitude was that he knew that Shelley suffered greatly from such malignant exploitations and that he would not defend himself; therefore he made his friend’s cause his own and wrote: “I reckon upon your leaving your personal battles to me,”[268] much in the same manner as Shelley had assumed his money troubles.

Following the review of the Revolt of Islam, a notice of Rosalind and Helen and of Lines Written among the Euganean Hills[269] appeared in The Examiner of May 9, 1819. Attention was called to the poet’s optimism and to his great love of nature: “the beauty of the external world has an answering heart, and the very whispers of the wind a meaning.” The Cenci, published in 1820, contained in its dedication a glowing tribute to Hunt, an honour in Shelley’s opinion only in a small degree worthy of his friend.[270] Hunt was intoxicated with the honour and wrote: “I feel as if you had bound, not only my head, but my very soul and body with laurels.”[271] On the subject of the tragedy he was equally enthusiastic: “What a noble book, Shelley, have you given us! What a true, stately, and yet affectionate mixture of poetry, philosophy, and human nature, horror, and all redeeming sweetness of intention, for there is an undersong of suggestion through it all, that sings, as it were, after the storm is over, like a brook in April.”[272] In a public expression of his opinion in The Examiner of March 19, 1820, Hunt pronounced The Cenci the greatest dramatic production of the day. Writing of the drama again in the same journal of July 19 and 26, 1820, he called Shelley “a framer of mighty lines” and continued: “Majesty and Love do sit on one throne in the lofty buildings of his poetry; and they will be found there, at a late and we trust a happier day, on a seat immortal as themselves.”

One of Hunt’s most perfect poems, JaffÁr, is inscribed to the memory of Shelley. The praise of JaffÁr and his friend’s undying loyalty immediately suggest to the reader that Hunt may have been celebrating his own and Shelley’s friendship. The last review to appear during Shelley’s lifetime by Hunt was that of Prometheus Unbound in three numbers of The Examiner of 1822. A projected review of Adonais alluded to in a letter of Hunt’s does not seem to have seen the light of publication, but a reference in a letter at the time is worth noting: “It is the most Delphic poety I have seen in a long while: full of those embodyings of the most subtle and airy imaginations,—those arrestings and explanations of the most shadowy yearnings of our being.”[273] The well-known account of Shelley’s rescue of a woman on Hampstead Heath was told in The Literary Examiner of August 23, 1823.[274] The same magazine of September 20 of the same year[275] contained the following Sonnet to Percy Shelley, given here because of its general inaccessibility:

“Hast thou from earth, then, really passed away,
And mingled with the shadowy mass of things
Which were, but are not? Will thy harp’s dear strings
No more yield music to the rapid play
Of thy swift thoughts, now turned thou art to clay?
Hark! Is that rushing of thy spirit’s wings,
When (like the skylark, who in mounting sings)
Soaring through high imagination’s way,
Thou pour’dst thy melody upon the earth,
Silent for ever? Yes, wild ocean’s wave
Hath o’er thee rolled. But whilst within the grave
Thou sleepst, let me in the love of thy pure worth
One thing foretell,—that thy great fame shall be
Progressive as Time’s flood, eternal as the sea!”

In Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries appeared the first biographical memoir of Shelley, a sketch of some seventy pages.[276] It shows great appreciation of the fine and gentle qualities of his rare genius and defends some of the weak points of his career. The description of his personal appearance, of the life at Marlowe, and the few anecdotes are often quoted. But on the whole, it lacks the bold strokes of vivid portraiture and it is very disappointing.[277] There was probably no one, with the exception of his wife, who knew Shelley so well as Hunt and who was, therefore, in a position to give as complete and intimate an idea of him. It was Mrs. Shelley’s wish that Hunt should be her husband’s biographer, for she thought that he, “perhaps above all others, understood his nature and his genius.”[278] Hunt, in The Spectator of August 13, 1859, gave as his reason for not writing Shelley’s life that he “could not survive enough persons.” But it is to be questioned if he were fitted for the task. His son did not think that he was because of his attention to details and his irresistible tendency to analysis: “a mind, in short, like that of Hamlet, cultivated rather than corrected by the trials of life, was scarcely suited to comprehend the strong instincts, indomitable will, and complete unity of idea which distinguished Shelley.”[279]

In the Tatler of August 1, 1831, Hunt wrote that “Mr. Shelley was a platonic philosopher, of the acutest and loftiest kind,” and that he belonged to the school of Plato and Æschylus, as Keats belonged to that of Spenser and Milton. Following The Tatler was the preface to The Mask of Anarchy,[280] published in 1832, originally designed for The Examiner in 1819, but laid aside by the editor because he thought the public not discerning enough “to do justice to the sincerity and kindheartedness of the spirit that walked in this flaming robe of verse.” The preface eulogizes the poet’s spiritual nature and his “seraphic purpose of good.” In The Seer, 1841, Shelley’s qualities of heart were pronounced more enduring than his genius.[281]Imagination and Fancy contained an essay and selections from his poems. Here Hunt makes the curious statement that little in the poems is purely poetical, but rather moral, political, and speculative. It is noteworthy that he predicts, probably for the first time, that, had Shelley lived, he would have been the greatest dramatic writer since the days of Elizabeth, if not, indeed, actually so, through what he did accomplish; a statement often repeated. He says: “If Coleridge is the sweetest of our poets, Shelley is at once the most ethereal and gorgeous, the one who has clothed his thought in draperies of the most evanescent and most magnificent words and imagery.... Shelley ... might well call himself Ariel.”[282] In connection with Shelley’s ethereal qualities, Mrs. James T. Fields quotes Hunt as having said on another occasion that Shelley always seemed to him as if he were “just alit from the planet Mercury, bearing a winged wand tipped with flame.”[283] In Imagination and Fancy, Hunt continues: “Not Milton himself is more learned in Grecisms, or nicer in entomological propriety; and nobody, throughout, has a style so Orphic and primeval.”

It is a touching circumstance that Hunt’s last letter bore reference to Shelley, and that his last effort as a public writer, made only a few days before his death, was in vindication of Shelley’s character.[284] The publication of the Shelley Memorials, 1859, in which Hunt had a part, provoked an unfavorable review in The Spectator. Hunt replied in the next number[285] of the same paper. In particular he asserted Shelley’s truthfulness, which had been assailed in respect to his story of the attempted assassination in Wales. He held that Shelley was not a man to be judged by ordinary rules, but that he was the highest possible exponent of humanity—an approach to divinity.

Hunt’s literary relation with Shelley falls into two divisions; publications written for Hunt’s periodicals, and received by Hunt in order to give Shelley an outlet of expression denied him in the more conservative papers; and second, positive literary imitation. Besides the poems quoted in Hunt’s criticisms of Shelley, the first includes a review of Godwin’s Mandeville,[286] a letter of protest regarding the second edition of Queen Mab,[287] Marianne’s Dream,[288] Song on a Faded Violet,[289] The Sunset,[290] The Question,[291] Good Night,[292] Sonnet, Ye Hasten to the Grave,[293] To —— (Lines to a Reviewer),[294] November, 1815,[295] Love’s Philosophy,[296] and the contributions designed by Shelley for The Liberal and published after his death.[297] Productions which were written for Hunt’s papers, but were not accepted, were Peter Bell the Third, The Mask of Anarchy, Julian and Maddalo, a letter on the persecution of Richard Carlile,[298] letters on Italy, and a review of Peacock’s Rhododaphne. Hunt’s failure to accept what was sent him greatly discouraged Shelley at times: “Mine is a life of failures; Peacock says my poetry is composed of day dreams and nightmares, and Leigh Hunt does not think it good enough for The Examiner.”

On a Fete at Carlton House, an attack on the Prince Regent, though perhaps directly inspired by the account in the dailies of the ball at Carlton House on June 20, 1811, was doubtless influenced by the continued attacks of The Examiner. As there are extant only two or three lines of the poem,[299] it is impossible to judge of the extent of the influence, but in Shelley’s letters to Hogg and to Edward Graham describing the poem, there is resemblance in tone and epithet to The Examiner. A letter from Shelley to Lord Ellenborough on the occasion of Eaton’s sentence for publishing the third part of Paine’s Age of Reason followed a long series of articles by Hunt on the prerogative of liberty of speech.[300]

A meeting of Reformers at Manchester on the sixteenth of August, 1819, for the purpose of discussing quietly the annual meeting of Parliament, universal suffrage, and voting by ballot, was dispersed by military force. Articles setting forth the long sufferings of the Reformers, charging the authorities with wanton bloodshed, and ridiculing the absurd trial of the offenders, appeared in The Examiner of August 22, 29, September 5, 19 and 26. The Mask of Anarchy, written on the occasion of the massacre at Manchester, was sent to Leigh Hunt for publication sometime before the first of November, 1819. The sentiment of both men is the same regarding the affair.

Accounts of the death of the Princess Charlotte and of the executions for high treason at Derby of Brandreth, Ludlam and Turner, after a horrible imprisonment, two articles in The Examiner of November 9, 1819, inspired Shelley’s Address to the People on the Death of the Princess Charlotte, sometimes known as We Pity the Plumage, but Forget the Dying Bird, dated November 12 of the same year. Hunt followed with a second article, Death of the Princess Charlotte and Indecent Advantage Taken of It, November 16, 1819. Both writers called attention to the disposition of the public to forget the sufferings of the poor, while it mourned hysterically with royalty; they declared that the administration of justice and the events leading to such crimes were of much greater importance. Three articles in The Examiner of October 17, 24 and 31, 1819, on the trial of Richard Carlile for libel, were followed by an open letter on the same case from Shelley to Hunt dated November 3, 1819. By scattered references it can be seen that Shelley fully agreed with Hunt in his opinion of the Prince Regent and of the Ministers, in his attitude toward the corruption of the court and of the army; and in his proposed regulation of taxes and of the public debt.

Œdipus Tyrannus or Swellfoot the Tyrant, begun August, 1820, succeeded a series of articles, beginning in The Examiner of June 11, 1820, and continuing throughout nineteen numbers,[301] on the subject of George IV’s attempt to divorce his wife.[302] Abhorrence of the king’s perfidy and of his ministers’ support, sympathy for Queen Caroline, and minor details parallel closely Hunt’s version in The Examiner. This passage occurs in the article of June 9: “An animal sets himself down, month after month, at Milan, to watch at her doors and windows, to intercept discarded servants and others who know what a deposition might be worth, and thus to gather poison for one of those venomous Green Bags, which have so long infected and nauseated the people, and are now to infect the Queen.” This seems to be the germ of the passage in Shelley’s poem beginning:

“Behold this bag! it is
The poison Bag of that Green Spider huge,
On which our spies sulked in ovation through
The streets of Thebes, when they were paved with dead.”

Then follows the plot to throw the contents upon the Queen.

The handling of the heroic couplet, employed in the Letter to Maria Gisborne and in Epipsychidon, as well as in Julian and Maddalo,[303] has been already discussed in its relationship to Hunt’s use of the same. Shelley, in a letter to Hunt, explains his position in regard to the language of Julian and Maddalo:

Rosalind and Helen, the Letter to Maria Gisborne, Swellfoot the Tyrant, and Peter Bell the Third[305] show a similar influence. The Letter to Maria Gisborne bears a resemblance to Hunt’s epistolary style, and was written, Mr. Forman thinks, for circulation in the Hunt circle only.[306] It was through Hunt, so Shelley states in the dedication, that he knew the Peter Bells of Wordsworth and of John Hamilton Reynolds. Shelley’s qualified adoption in these poems of Hunt’s theory of poetic language is seen in the choice of a vocabulary in dialogue nearer everyday usage than the more remote one of his other poems. Yet the result does not bear any great resemblance to Hunt. Shelley’s unvarying refinement and sensibility kept him from committing the same errors of taste, but his work suffered rather than gained by an innovation which was probably a concession to his friendship for Hunt and not a strong conviction. With the exception of the descriptive passages, the keynote of these poems is on a lower poetic pitch.

On subjects of Italian art and literature the friends held much the same opinion. At times Shelley seems to have been led by Hunt’s judgment, as in his conclusions regarding Raphael and Michaelangelo.[307] One passage on the Italian poets indicates a possible borrowing of thought and figure on Shelley’s part when he wrote of Boccaccio that he was superior to Ariosto and to Tasso, “the children of a later and colder day.... How much do I admire Boccaccio! What descriptions of nature are those in his little introduction to every new day! It is the morning of life stripped of that mist of familiarity which makes it obscure to us.”[308] Hunt wrote: “Petrarch, Boccaccio and Dante are the morning, noon and night of the great Italian day.”[309]

Poems which refer directly to Hunt are the fourteen lines in the Letter to Maria Gisborne;[310] possibly the fragment, beginning, “For me, my friend, if not that tears did tremble.”[311] A cancelled passage of the Adonais describes Hunt thus:

And then came one of sweet and carnal looks,
Those soft smiles to his dark and night-like eyes
Were as the clear and ever-living brooks
Are to the obscure fountains whence they rise,
Showing how pure they are; a Paradise
Of happy truth upon his forehead low
Lay, making wisdom lovely, in the guise
Of earth-awakening morn upon the brow
Of star-deserted heaven, while ocean gleams below,
······
His song, though very sweet, was low and faint,
A single strain—[312]

The thirty-fifth strophe of the present version refers to Hunt.

Shelley’s last letter had reference to Hunt.[313] His last literary effort was a poem comparing Hunt to a firefly and welcoming him to Italy, just as Hunt’s last letter and last public utterance bore reference to Shelley—strange coincidence, but striking testimony to their mutual devotion. An instance of Shelley’s overestimation of Hunt’s ability is seen in a passage where he says that Hunt excels in tragedy in the power of delineating passion and, what is more necessary, of connecting and developing it, “the last an incredible effort for himself but easy for Hunt.”[314] He greatly valued and trusted Hunt’s affection, at times calling him his best[315] and his only friend.[316] If the tender solicitude and veneration of a beautiful spirit for a man of vastly inferior abilities seems strange, it is but a witness to the humility of true genius.