Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 28.djvu/274

Hunt Essays on the Merits and Reputation of the Authors.' The tales were selected from Johnson, Voltaire, Marmontel, Goldsmith, Mackenzie, Brooke, Hawkesworth, and Sterne.

About this time Hunt was for a while a clerk under his brother Stephen, an attorney, and afterwards obtained a clerkship in the war office under the patronage of Addington, the premier, his father's friend. This situation he abandoned in 1808 to co-operate with his brother John in a weekly newspaper, to be called 'The Examiner.' Although no politician, he undertook to be editor and leader-writer. The paper soon became popular. It was thoroughly independent, and owed allegiance to no party, but advocated liberal politics with courage and consistency. Its main object was to assert the cause of reform in parliament, liberality of opinion in general, and to infuse in its readers a taste for literature. As a journalist no man did more than Leigh Hunt, during his thirteen years' connection with the 'Examiner,' to raise the tone of newspaper writing, and to introduce into its keenest controversies a spirit of fairness and tolerance.

In 1809 Hunt married Miss Marianne Kent. In the same year appeared 'An Attempt to show the Folly and Danger of Methodism …,' a reprint, with additions, from the 'Examiner.' In 1810 his brother John started a quarterly magazine called 'The Reflector,' which Leigh Hunt edited. Only four numbers of it appeared. Barnes, Charles Lamb, and other friends contributed to it. Hunt wrote for it a poem called 'The Feast of the Poets' (afterwards published separately), a playful and satirical piece, which offended most of the poetical fraternity, especially Gilford, editor of the 'Quarterly Review.' The 'Round Table,' a series of essays on literature, men, and manners, by William Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt (2 vols. 1817), originally appeared in the 'Examiner ' between 1815 and 1817.

The 'Examiner' was looked upon with suspicion by those in power. More than onceThrice [sic] the brothers were prosecuted by the government for political offences, but in each casein two cases [sic] were acquitted. An article on the savagery of military floggings led to a prosecution early in 1811, when Brougham successfully defended the Hunts. Immediately after the acquittal Shelley first introduced himself to Hunt, by sending him from Oxford a sympahetic note of congratulation. At a political dinner in 1812 the assembled company significantly omitted the usual toast of the prince regent. A writer in the 'Morning Post,' noticing this, printed a poem of adulation, describing the prince as the 'Protector of the Arts,' the 'Mæcenas of the Age,' the 'Glory of the People,' an 'Adonis of Loveliness, attended by Pleasure, Honour, Virtue, and Truth.' The 'Examiner' retorted by a plain description of the prince. 'This Adonis in loveliness,' the article concluded, 'was a corpulent man of fifty'—in short, this delightful, blissful, wise, 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.' A prosecution of Hunt and his brother followed. They were tried in December 1812; Brougham again appeared in their defence, but both were convicted, and each was sentenced by the judge, Lord Ellenborough, in the following February to two years' imprisonment in separate gaols and a fine of 500l. They were subsequently informed that if a pledge were given by them to abstain in future from attacks on the regent it would insure them a remission of both the imprisonment and the fine. This was indignantly rejected, and the two brothers went to prison, John to Clerkenwell and Leigh to Surrey gaol. Leigh was then in delicate health. With his invincible cheerfulness he had the walls of his room papered with a trellis of roses, the ceiling painted with sky and clouds, the windows furnished with Venetian blinds, and an unfailing supply of flowers. He had the companionship of his books, busts, and a pianoforte. He was not debarred from the society of his wife and friends. Charles Lamb declared there was no other such room, except in a fairy tale. Moore, a frequent visitor to the gaol, brought Byron with him in May 1813, and Hunt's intimacy with Byron was thus begun (, Life, ii. 204). Shelley had made him 'a princely offer,' which was declined immediately after the sentence was pronounced (Autobiog. i. 221). When Jeremy Bentham came to see him he found him playing at battledore. During his imprisonment he wrote 'The Descent of Liberty: a Masque, dealing with the downfall of Napoleon, published in 1815, and dedicated to his friend Barnes. All through his imprisonment he continued to edit the 'Examiner.' He left prison in February 1815, and, after a year's lodging in the Edgware Road, went to live at Hampstead, where Shelley, who had just sent him a sum of money, was his guest in December 1816. About the same time Charles Cowden Clarke introduced Keats to him, and Hunt was the means of bringing Keats and Shelley together for the first time (ib. i. 224 228). An article by Hunt on 'Young Poets,