Reasons for it.
A severely critical estimate, however, will discover in Leigh Hunt—perhaps in very close juxtaposition and in a sort of causal relation to these merits themselves—something which is not quite so good. Even his catholicity may be set down in part, by the Enemy, to a certain loose facility of liking, an absence of fastidiousness and selection. If Lamb goes too far towards the ends of the English literary earth for the objects of his affection, Hunt is rather too content to find them in triviis et angiportis. He does not exactly “like grossly,” but he likes a little promiscuously. The fault is no very bad one; and it becomes exceedingly venial—nay, a positive virtue in time and circumstance—when we compare it with the unreasonable exclusiveness of the Neo-classic period. But it is a kind of criticism which inclines rather too much to the uncritical.
His attitude to Dante.
A further objection may be taken by applying that most dangerous of all tests, the question “What does he dislike?” For the twentieth time (probably) let us repeat that in criticism likes and dislikes are free; and that the man who, however unfortunately, still honestly dislikes what the consensus of good criticism approves, is entitled to say so, and had much better say so. But he gives his reasons, descends upon particulars, at his peril. Leigh Hunt, to do him justice, is not like Mr Rymer—it is not his habit “no wise to allow.” But it is certainly a pity that one of his exceptions should be Dante, and it is certainly a much greater pity that among the reasons given for unfavourable criticism[[472]] should be because Dante “puts fabulous people with real among the damned,” because Purgatory is such a very disagreeable idea, and because the whole poem contains “absurdities too obvious nowadays to need remark.”
This, however, was merely an exceptional outburst of that “Liberal” Philistinism and blundering which, it is only fair to say, had been provoked by plentiful exhibition of the same qualities on the other side, and which was more particularly excusable in Leigh Hunt (humanly, if not critically, speaking), because nobody, not even Hazlitt, had received worse treatment from that side than himself. But it does something affect his critical position; for even Hazlitt managed, in some queer fashion, to distinguish between the prostitute baronet, Sir Walter Scott, and “the Author of Waverley,” between that wicked Mr Burke and the author of the great speeches and treatises. But the main reasons why Hunt must go with shorter measure than others, is the combination of abundance in quantity with a certain want of distinction in quality, which mars his writings. Not even the largest space here possible would enable us to go through them all, and we should be able to select but a few that are of unquestionably distinctive and characteristic race. It is, indeed, rather in his favour that you may dip almost anywhere into him with the certainty of a wholesome, pleasant, and refreshing critical bath or draught. He is very rarely untrustworthy; and when he is, as in the Dante case, he tells the fact and its secret more frankly even than Hazlitt himself. But it would be unjust to refer to no samples of him, and a few of the most characteristic shall therefore be given.
Examples from Imagination and Fancy.
Fortunately there is an extremely favourable example of his criticism which fills a whole book to itself, and is written under something like a general scheme. This is the volume—modestly sub-titled “Selections,” but containing a very large proportion of comment and original matter—which he called Imagination and Fancy,[[473]] and intended to follow up with four others, though only one, Wit and Humour,[[474]] was ever written. The plan was begun late (1844); but as we have seen in almost every instance, a man’s critical work very rarely declines with years, unless he actually approaches dotage: and the book is, on the whole, not merely the most favourable but the most representatively favourable example of Leigh Hunt’s criticism. It opens by a set Essay on the question “What is Poetry?” from which, perhaps, any one who knew the author’s other work, but not this, might not expect very much, for Hunt had not an abstract or philosophical head. He acquits himself, however, remarkably well. His general definition that Poetry is “the utterance of a passion for truth, beauty, and power, embodying and illustrating its conceptions by imagination and fancy, and modulating its language on the principle of variety in uniformity,” is not bad; but these things are never very satisfactory. It will be seen that Hunt, like Coleridge, though with a less “Cimmerian” obscurity of verbiage, “dodges” the frank mention of “metre” or “verse”; but this is not because he is in any way inclined to compromise. On the contrary, he says[[475]] (taking, and perhaps designedly, the very opposite line to Wordsworth) that he “knows of no very fine versification unaccompanied with fine poetry.” But the strength of the “Essay,” as of the whole book, is in the abundant and felicitous illustration of the various points of this definition by commented selections from the poets themselves.