Leigh Hunt certainly was not driven to this little-broken retirement by the want of qualities which are attractive in society, or by the tastes that render society attractive; but under the force of remarkable contradictions in his character, he was often fain to waive what he desired and could easily have—“letting I would not wait upon I may,” with an apparent caprice most exasperating to the bystander. He professed readiness for “whatever is going forward,” seemed eager to meet any approaching pleasure; and then hung back with a coy, reluctant, anxious delay, that forbore its own satisfaction altogether. Probably this apparent contradiction may be traced to his origin and nurture. According to all evidence respecting his immediate progenitors, he was little of a Hunt, save in his gaiety and avowed love of “the pleasurable.” His natural energy, which showed itself in a robust frame, a powerful voice, a great capacity for endurance, and a strong will, seems to have been inherited from Stephen Shewell, the stern, headstrong, and implacable. From the Bickleys, possibly—the gallant Knight Banneret of King William’s Irish wars will pardon the doubt—his mother transmitted her own material tendency to an over-conscientious, reflective, hesitating temperament, which drew back from any action not manifestly and imperatively dictated by duty. The son showed all these contradictory traits even in his aspect and bearing.
He was tall rather than otherwise,—five feet ten inches and a half when measured for the St. James’s Volunteers; though, in common with men whose length is in the body rather than the legs, his height diminished as he advanced in life. He was remarkably straight and upright in his carriage, with a short, firm step, and a cheerful, almost dashing approach,—smiling, breathing, and making his voice heard in little inarticulate ejaculations as he met a friend, in an irrepressible satisfaction at the encounter that not unfrequently conveyed high gratification to the arriver who was thus greeted. He had straight black hair, which he wore parted in the centre; a dark but not pale complexion; features compounded between length and a certain irregularity of outline, characteristic of the American mould; black eyebrows, firmly marking the edge of a brow, over which was a singularly upright, flat, white forehead, and under which beamed a pair of eyes dark, brilliant, reflecting, gay, and kind, with a certain look of observant humour, that suggested an idea of what is called slyness when it is applied to children or girls; for he had not the aspect given to him in one of his portraits, of which he said that “the fellow looked as if he had stolen a tankard.” He had a head massive and tall, and larger than most men’s,—Byron, Shelley, and Keats wore hats which he could not put on; but it was not out of proportion to the figure, its outlines being peculiarly smooth and devoid of “bumps.” His upper lip was long, his mouth large and hard in the flesh; his chin retreating and gentle like a woman’s. His sloping shoulders, not very wide, almost concealed the ample proportions of his chest; though that was of a compass which not every pair of arms could span. He looked like a man cut out for action,—a soldier; but he shrank from physical contest, telling you that his sight was short, and that he was “timid.” We shall understand that mistaken candour better when we have examined his character a little further. Yet he did shrink from using his vigorous faculties, even in many ways. Nature had gifted him with an intense dramatic perception, an exquisite ear for music, and a voice of extraordinary compass, power, flexibility, and beauty. It extended from the C below the line to the F sharp above: there were no “passages” that he could not execute; the quality was sweet, clear, and ringing: he would equally have sung the music of Don Giovanni or Sarastro, of Oroveso or Maometto Secondo. Yet nature had not endowed him with some of the qualities needed for the practical musician,—he had no aptitude for mechanical contrivance, but faint enjoyment of power for its own sake. He dabbled on the pianoforte; delighted to repeat airs pleasing or plaintive; and if he would occasionally fling himself into the audacious revels of Don Giovanni, he preferred to be Lindoro or Don Ottavio; and still more, by the help of his falsetto, to dally with the tender treble of the Countess in Figaro, or Polly in Beggars’ Opera. This waiving of the potential, this preference for the lightsome and tender, ran through all his character,—save when duty bade him draw upon his sterner resources; and then out came the inflexibility of the Shewell and the unyielding determination of the Hunts. But as soon as the occasion passed, the manner passed with it; and the man whose solemn, clear-voiced indignation had made the very floor and walls vibrate was seen tenderly and blandly extenuating the error of his persecutor and gaily confessing to a community of mistake.
While he was yet at school, Hunt was pronounced by one of his schoolfellows a “fool for refining”—that is, one who was a fool in his judgment through a hair-splitting anxiety to be precise. A boy all his life, this leading foible of his boyhood attended him throughout. He has been likened to Hamlet,—only it was a Hamlet who was not a prince, but a hard-working man. The defect was increased in Leigh Hunt, as it evidently was in the prince, by a certain imperfection in understanding, appreciating, or thoroughly mastering the material, tangible, physical part of nature. This, again, is inconsistent with his own account of himself, but it will be confirmed by a close critical scrutiny of his writings. Over-sensitive, he was exquisitely conscious of such physical perceptions as he had. He was passionately fond of music, which he took to as we have seen. He was keenly impressed by painting and by colours,—which he defined with uncertainty, unless they were, what he liked them to be, very intense. He revelled in the aspect of the country,—but needed literary, poetic, or personal association, or habit, to help the appreciation of the landscape. His animation, his striking appearance, his manly voice, its sweetness and flexibility, the exhaustless fancy to which it gave utterance, his almost breathlessly tender manner in saying tender things, his eyes deep, bright, and genial, with a dash of cunning, his delicate yet emphatic homage,—all made him a “dangerous” man among women;—and he shrank back from the danger, the quickest to take alarm; confessing that “to err is human,” as if he had erred in any but the most theoretical or imaginative sense! Remind him of his practical virtue, and, to disprove your too favourable construction, he would give you a sermon on the sins of the fancy, hallowed by quotations from the Bible—of which he was as much master as any clergyman—and illustrated by endless quotations from the poets in all languages, with innumerable biographical anecdotes of the said poets, to prove the fearful peril of the first step; and also to prove that, though men, they were not bad men;—that it is not for us to cast the first stone, and that, probably, if they had been different, their poetry would have suffered, to the grievous loss of the library and mankind.
He inculcated the study of minor pleasures with so much industry, that his writings have caused him to be taken for a minor voluptuary. His special apparatus for the luxury consisted in some old cloak to put about his shoulders when cold—which he allowed to slip off while reading or writing; in a fire—“to toast his feet”—which he let out many times in the day, with as many apologies to the servant for the trouble; and in a bill of fare, which he preposterously restricted for a fancied delicacy of stomach, and a fancied poison in everything agreeable, and which he could scarcely taste for a natural dulness of palate. Unable to perceive the smell of flowers, he habitually strove to imagine it. The Epicurean in theory was something like a Stoic in practice; and he would break off an “article” on the pleasures of feasting to ease his hunger, literally, with a supper of bread; turning round to enjoy by proxy, on report, the daintier food which he had provided for others. Eyeing the meat in another’s plate, he would quote Peter Pindar—
“On my life, I could turn glutton,
On such pretty-looking mutton;”
but would still, with the relish of Lazarillo de Tormes, stick to his own “staff of life,” and quaff his water, jovially repeating after Armstrong, “Nought like the simple element dilutes.”
Now, most excellent reader, are you in something of a condition to understand the man’s account of his own failings—his “improvidence” and his “timidity.” He had no grasp of things material; but exaggerating his own defects, he so hesitated at any arithmetical effort, that he could scarcely count. He has been seen unable to find 3s. 6d. in a drawer full of half-crowns and shillings, since he could not see the “sixpence.” Hence his stewardship was all performed by others. He laboured enormously,—making fresh work out of everything he did; for he would not mention anything, however parenthetically, without “verifying” it. Hence it is true that he had scarcely time for stewardship, unless he had neglected his work and wages as a master-workman. He saw nothing until it had presented itself to him in a sort of literary, theoretical aspect, and hence endowed his friends, all round, with fictitious characters founded on fact. One was the thrifty housewife, another the steady man of business, a third the poetic enthusiast—and so on. And he acted on these estimates, until sometimes he found out his mistake, and confessed that he “had been deceived.” The discovery was sometimes as imaginary as the original estimate, and friends, whose sterling qualities he could not overrate, have seen him, for the discovery of his mistake in regard to some fancied grace, avert his eye in cold “disappointment.” He made the same supposititious discoveries and estimates with himself. His mother had the jaundice before he was born; he had unquestionably a tendency to bilious affections; in the Greek poet’s account of Hercules and the Serpents, the more timid, because mortal, child, who is aghast at the horrid visitors sent by the relentless Juno, is called, as Leigh Hunt translated the oft-repeated quotation, “the extremely bilious Iphiclus;” and being bilious, Leigh Hunt set himself down as “timid.” He had probably felt his heart beat at the approach of danger, been startled by a sudden noise, or hesitated “to snuff a candle with his fingers,” which Charles the Fifth said would make any man know fear. Yet he had braved persecution in the refusal to fag at school; was an undaunted though not skilful rider; a swimmer not unacquainted with drowning risks; undismayed, except for others, when passing the roaring torrent at the broad ford,—when braving shipwreck in the British Channel, or the thunder-hurricane in the Mediterranean; he instantly confronted the rustic boors who challenged him on the Thames, or in the Apennines, and stood unmoved to face the sentence of a criminal court, though the sentence was to be the punishment he most dreaded—the prison.
Such was the character of the man who came from school to be the critic, first of the drama, then of literature and politics; and then to be a workman in the schools where he had criticized. He brought to his labours great powers, often left latent, and used only in their superficial action; a defective perception of the tangible part of the subject; an imagination active, but overrating its own share in the business; an impulsive will, checked by an over-scrupulous, over-conscientious habit of “refining;” a nice taste, and an overwhelming sympathy with every form and aspect of human enjoyment, suffering, or aspiration. His public conduct, his devotion to “truth,” whether in politics or art, won him admiration and illustrious friendships. In a society of many severed circles he formed one centre, around which were gathered Lamb, Ollier, Barnes, Mitchell, Shelley, Keats, Byron, Hazlitt, Blanchard, Forster, Carlyle, and many more, departed or still living; some of them centres of circles in which Leigh Hunt was a wanderer, but all of them, in one degree or other, attesting their substantial value for his character. They influenced him, he influenced them, and through them the literature and politics of the century, more largely, perhaps, than any one of them alone. Let us see, then, what it was that he did.