[6] Ibid., I, p. 44.
[7] Memoirs and Correspondence of Coventry Patmore, ed. Basil Champney, I, p. 32.
[8] Life, Letters and Table Talk of Benjamin Robert Haydon, ed. by Stoddard, p. 232.
[9] Correspondence, I, p. 272.
[10] On once being accused of speculation Hunt replied that he had never been “in a market of any kind but to buy an apple or a flower.” (Atlantic Monthly, LIV, p. 470.) Nor did Hunt admire money-getting propensities in others. He said of Americans: “they know nothing so beautiful as the ledger, no picture so lively as the national coin, no music so animating as the chink of a purse.” (The Examiner, 1808, p. 721.)
[11] Dickens did Hunt an irreparable injury in caricaturing him as Harold Skimpole. The character bore such an unmistakable likeness to Hunt that it was recognized by every one who knew him, yet the weaknesses and vices were greatly multiplied and exaggerated. Before the appearance of Bleak House, Dickens wrote Hunt in a letter which accompanied the presentation copies of Oliver Twist and the New American edition of the Pickwick Papers: “You are an old stager in works, but a young one in faith—faith in all beautiful and excellent things. If you can only find in that green heart of yours to tell me one of these days, that you have met, in wading through the accompanying trifles, with anything that felt like a vibration of the old chord you have touched so often and sounded so well, you will confer the truest gratification on your old friend, Charles Dickens.” (Littell’s Living Age, CXCIV, p. 134.)
His apology after Hunt’s death was complete, but it could not destroy the lasting memory of an immortal portrait. He wrote: “a man who had the courage to take his stand against power on behalf of right—who in the midst of the sorest temptations, maintained his honesty unblemished by a single stain—who, in all public and private transactions, was the very soul of truth and honour—who never bartered his opinion or betrayed his friend—could not have been a weak man; for weakness is always treacherous and false, because it has not the power to resist.” (All The Year Round, April 12, 1862.)
[12] Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, Book VIII, Chap. I.
[13] Prof. Saintsbury has very plausibly suggested that a similar attitude in Godwin, Coleridge and Southey in respect to financial assistance was a legacy from patronage days. (A History of Nineteenth Century Literature, p. 33.) The same might be said of Hunt.
[14] S. C. Hall, A Book of Memories of Great Men and Women of the Age, from Personal Acquaintance, p. 247.