[445] II, pp. 90-93.
[446] Charles Lamb and Some of His Companions in the Quarterly Review of January, 1867.
[447] A New Spirit of the Age, p. 182.
[448] Near the close of his life Hunt wrote: “The jests about London and the Cockneys did not affect me in the least, as far as my faith was concerned. They might as well have said that Hampstead was not beautiful, or Richmond lovely; or that Chaucer and Milton were Cockneys when they went out of London to lie on the grass and look at the daisies. The Cockney School is the most illustrious in England; for, to say nothing of Pope and Gray, who were both veritable Cockneys, ‘born within the sound of Bow Bell,’ Milton was so too; and Chaucer and Spenser were both natives of the city. Of the four greatest English poets, Shakespeare only was not a Londoner.” (Autobiography, II, p. 197.)
[449] Recollections of Writers, p. 19. Other accounts of these suppers are to be found in Hazlitt’s On the Conversations of Authors; in the works dealing with Charles Lamb; and in the Cornhill Magazine, November, 1900.
[450] The Life of Mary Russell Mitford. Edited by A. J. K. L’Estrange, New York, 1870, I, p. 370, November 12, 1819.
[451] Sharp, The Life and Letters of Joseph Severn, p. 33.
[452] Notes, pp. 57-61.
[453] Ibid., pp. 62-68.
[454] Other controversies, such as the one with Antoine Dubost, show Hunt’s aggressiveness. Dubost had sold a painting of Damocles to his patron, a Mr. Hope. The latter became convinced that the author was an imposter and tore the signature from the picture. In retaliation Dubost painted and exhibited Beauty and the Beast, a caricature of the whole incident. The Examiner accused him of forgery and rank ingratitude. Hunt does not seem to have had any particular proof or knowledge on the subject, yet he employed scathing denunciation in writing of it. Dubost replied and asserted that Hunt was Hope’s hireling, and that he had “ransacked the whole calendar of scurrility, and hunted for nick-names through all the common places of blackguardism.” (Dubost, An Appeal to the Public against the Calumnies of the Examiner, London, n. d., p. 9.)