Rogers was a careful and fastidious writer, but his excellence does not go much further. His name is a prominent one in the literary annals of the time, but his wealth rather than his merit accounts for this.
6. Leigh Hunt (1784–1859), unlike Rogers, was not a wealthy amateur who could trifle for years with mediocre production; he was of the arena, taking and giving hard knocks in both political and literary scuffles. He was born in Middlesex, educated at Christ’s Hospital, and while still in his teens became a journalist, and remained a journalist all his life. His Radical journal The Examiner (1808) was strongly critical of the Government, and Hunt’s aptitude for abuse landed him in prison for two years. His captivity, as he gleefully records, made a hero of him; and most of the literary men who prided themselves upon their Liberalism—among them being Wordsworth, Byron, Moore, Keats, and Shelley—sought his friendship. Hunt had a powerful influence on Keats, and published some of the latter’s shorter poems in The Examiner. He tried various other journalistic ventures, but none of them had the success of The Examiner; his attempted collaboration in journalism with Byron was a lamentable failure. He died, like Wordsworth and others, a respectable pensioner of the Government he had once so strongly condemned.
He much fancied himself as a poet, and popular taste confirmed him in his delusion. The best of his longer poems is Rimini (1811), an Italian tale in verse. The poem is of interest because its flowing couplets were the model for Keats’s Endymion. Hunt’s shorter pieces—for example, Abou Ben Adhem—are often graceful, but their poetical value is not very high.
His prose includes an enormous amount of journalistic matter, which was occasionally collected and issued in book form. Such was his Men, Women, and Books (1847). His Autobiography (1850) contains much interesting biographical and literary gossip. He is an agreeable essayist, fluent and easygoing; his critical opinions are solid and sensible, though often half-informed. He wrote a novel, Sir Ralph Esher (1832), and a very readable book on London called The Town (1848). Hunt is not a genius, but he is a useful and amiable second-rate writer.
7. James Hogg (1770–1835). Hogg became known to the world as “the Ettrick Shepherd,” for he was born of a shepherd’s family in the valley of the Ettrick, in Selkirkshire. He was a man of much natural ability, and from his infancy was an eager listener to the songs and ballads of his district. He was introduced to Walter Scott (1802) while the latter was collecting the Border minstrelsy, and by Scott he was supported both as a literary man and as a farmer. Many of his admirers assisted him in the acquisition of a sheep-farm, but Hogg proved to be a poor farmer. He was known to most of the members of the Scottish literary circle, but his shiftless and unmanageable disposition alienated most of his friends. He died in his native district.
Hogg had little education and very little sense of discrimination, so that much of his poetry is very poor indeed. Sometimes, however, his native talent prevails, and he writes such poems as Kilmeny and When the Kye comes Hame. The latter is a lyric resembling those of Burns in its humor and simple appeal. In Kilmeny (in The Queen’s Wake) he achieves what is commonly held to be the true Celtic note: the eerie description of elves and the gloaming, and murmuring and musical echoes of things half seen and half understood. Some of his books are The Forest Minstrel (1801), The Queen’s Wake (1813), and The Brownie of Bodsbeck (1818), the last being a prose tale.
8. Ebenezer Elliott (1781–1849). Elliott was born at Masborough, in Yorkshire, and worked as an iron-founder. The struggles of the poor, oppressed by the Corn Laws, were early borne in upon him, and his poetical gift was used in a fierce challenge to the existing system. Like Crabbe, he devoted himself to the cause of the poor; and it is a tribute to his merit as a poet that, in spite of his bristling assertiveness, he produced some work of real value. He became known as the “Corn Law Rhymer,” and he lived to see the abolition of the laws that he had always attacked.
His best book is Corn Law Rhymes (1830), which includes the powerful and somber Battle-song. This poem is a kind of anthem for the poor, and breathes a spirit of fierce unrest.
9. Felicia Hemans (1793–1835). Mrs. Hemans’s maiden name was Browne, and she was born at Liverpool. Later she removed to Wales, where a large part of her life was spent. At the age of fifteen she began to write poetry, and persisted in the habit all her life. She married somewhat unhappily, but she lived to be a highly popular poetess, and produced a large amount of work. She died in Dublin.
Nobody can call Mrs. Hemans a great poetess, but her verses are facile and fairly melodious, and she can give simple themes a simple setting. One can respect the genuine quality of her emotions, and the zeal with which she expressed them. Some of her better lyrics—for example, The Stately Homes of England, The Graves of a Household, and The Pilgrim Fathers—are in their limited fashion well done.