Chapter V (1)

Characteristics of the "Cockney School"--Reasons for Tory enmity--Establishment of _Blackwood's Magazine_ and the _Quarterly Review_--Their methods of attack--Other targets--Authorship of anonymous articles--Members of the Cockney group--Byron--Hunt--Keats--Shelley-- Hazlitt.

The word "Cockney" says Bulwer-Lytton, signifies the "archetype of the Londoner east of Temple Bar, and is as grotesquely identified with the Bells of Bow as Quasimodo with those of Notre Dame."[446] The epithet remains doubtful in origin but is proverbially significant of odium and of ridicule. R. H. Horne asserts that, in its first application, it meant merely "pastoral, minus nature."[447] The word did not long carry so harmless a connotation. It was first applied to Hunt by the Tory journals in 1817 and, in the phrase "Cockney School," was gradually extended until it included most of his associates. The group of men thus arbitrarily banded together did not form a _school_ or cult, and themselves resented such a classification. They differed widely in their fundamental principles of life and art. They were not all of one vocation. On the other hand they had certain superficial points in common which made them collectively vulnerable to the dart of the enemy. They were Londoners[448] by birth or by adoption; with the exception of Shelley they may all be said to have belonged to the middle class; the most Cockneyfied of them had certain vulgar mannerisms; they egotistically paraded their personal affairs in public; they praised each other somewhat fulsomely in dedications and elsewhere, though not always to the full satisfaction of everybody concerned; they presented each other with wreaths of bay, laurel, and roses, and with locks of hair; they agreed in liking Thomas Moore and in disliking Southey; they moved with complacency within a limited circle to the exclusion of a large city; in general they were liberal in politics and in religion; they were in revolt against French criticism; they chose Elizabethan or Italian models, and, as a rule, they conceitedly ignored or contemned contemporary writers.

The gatherings of the coterie have been nowhere better described than by Cowden Clarke:

"Evenings of Mozartian operatic and chamber music at Vincent
Novello's own house, where Leigh Hunt, Shelley, Keats and the Lambs
were invited guests; the brilliant supper parties at the alternate
dwellings of the Novellos, the Hunts and the Lambs, who had mutually
agreed that bread and cheese, with celery, and Elia's immortalized
'Lutheran beer' were to be the sole cates provided; the meetings at
the theatres, when Munden, Dowton, Liston, Bannister, Elliston and
Fanny Kelly were on the stage; the picnic repasts enjoyed together by
appointment in the fields that lay spread in green breadth and
luxuriance between the west end of Oxford Street and the western
slope of Hampstead Hill--are things never to be forgotten."[449]

Miss Mitford relates a ludicrous incident of one of these meetings:

"Leigh Hunt (not the notorious Mr. Henry Hunt, but the fop, poet and
politician of the 'Examiner') is a great keeper of birthdays. He was
celebrating that of Haydn, the great composer--giving a dinner,
crowning his bust with laurels, berhyming the poor dear German, and
conducting an apotheosis in full form. Somebody told Mr. Haydon they
were celebrating _his_ birthday. So off he trotted to Hampstead, and
bolted into the company--made a very fine animated speech--thanked
him most sincerely for what they had done him and the arts in his
person."[450]

At one time the set became violently vegetarian. The enthusiasm came to a sudden end, as narrated by Joseph Severn:

"Leigh Hunt most eloquently discussed the charms and advantages of
these vegetable banquets, depicting in glowing words the cauliflowers
swimming in melted butter, and the peas and beans never profaned with
animal gravy. In the midst of his rhapsody he was interrupted by the
venerable Wordsworth, who begged permission to ask a question. 'If,'
he said, 'by chance of good luck they ever met with a caterpillar,
they thanked their stars for the delicious morsel of animal food.'
This absurdity all came to an end by an ugly discovery. Haydon, whose
ruddy face had kept the other enthusiasts from sinking under their
scanty diet--for they clung fondly to the hope that they would become
like him, although they increased daily in pallor and leanness--this
Haydon was discovered one day coming out of a chop-house. He was
promptly taxed with treachery, when he honestly confessed that every
day after the vegetable repast he ate a good beef-steak. This fact
plunged the others in despair, and Leigh Hunt assured me that on
vegetable diet his constitution had received a blow from which he had
never recovered. With Shelley it was different, for he was by nature
formed to regard animal food repulsively."[451]

The causes of the enmity of the press were political rather than literary or personal and have already been sufficiently dwelt upon in the preceding chapters. The strong rivalry between Edinburgh and London as publishing strongholds intensified the strife. Hunt in particular had centered attention upon himself by his persistent and violent attacks on Gifford and Southey for several years previous to 1817. Besides _The Examiner's_ persistent allusions to these two unregenerates, a savage diatribe had appeared in the _Feast of the Poets_, which alluded to Gifford's humble origin and mediocre ability, charged him with being a government tool, and continued: "But a vile, peevish temper, the more inexcusable in its indulgence, because he appears to have had early warning of its effects, breaks out in every page of his criticism, and only renders his affected grinning the more obnoxious ... I pass over the nauseous epistle to Peter Pindar, and even notes to his Baviad and Moeviad, where though less vulgar in his language, he has a great deal of the pert cant and snip-snap which he deprecates."[452] During 1817, _The Examiner_ had concerned itself particularly with Southey. He had been called an apostate, a hypocrite, and almost every other name in Hunt's abusive vocabulary. Sir Walter Scott had not been spared. His politics were said to be easily estimated by the "simple fact, that of all the advocates of Charles the Second, he is the least scrupulous in mentioning his crimes, because he is the least abashed;" his command of prose was declared equal to nothing beyond "a plain statement or a brief piece of criticism;" his poetry "a little thinking conveyed in a great many words."[453] Hunt thus secured to himself, through offensive and aggressive abuse, the hostility of the Tories both in England and in Scotland. His weaknesses and affectations made him a conspicuous and assailable target for the inevitable return fire.[454]

The establishment by the Tories of the _Quarterly Review_ in 1809 and of _Blackwood's Magazine_ in 1817 was with the view of opposing and, if possible, of suppressing the _Edinburgh Review_ and _The Examiner_. The brunt of the hostility fell upon the latter, for Hunt, by reason of his extreme social and religious policy, could not always rally the _Edinburgh Review_ to his support. With the founding of the _London Magazine_ in 1820 he had a new ally in its editor, John Scott, but the war had then already raged for three years, and Scott fell a victim to it in two years' time.[455] By a process of elimination Scott fixed the identity of "Z"--such was the only signature of the articles on the Cockney School in _Blackwood's_--upon Lockhart. He also asserted that Lockhart was the editor of the magazine. Lockhart demanded an apology. His friend Christie took up the quarrel. In the duel which followed Scott was fatally wounded. His death followed Keats's within four days.

The method of attack with the _Quarterly_ and with _Blackwood's_ was much the same. They differed chiefly in the style of approach. The former may be compared to heavy artillery, slow, cumbrous and crushing. The reviews indeed often verge on dullness and stupidity. Neither Gifford nor Southey seemed to have been blessed with the saving grace of humor in dealing with the Cockney School. _Blackwood's_, on the other hand, had too much, for whenever one of the so-called Cockneys was mentioned, its contributors wallowed in the mire of coarse buffoonery and cruel satire, disgusting scandal and vulgar parody. The only counter-irritant to such a dose is the clever joking and keen humor; but even when this is clean, which is rare, the whole is rendered unpalatable by the thought of its cruelty and of its frequent falsity. Furthermore, _Blackwood's_ was more merciless in its persecution than the _Quarterly_ in that it was untiring. It was perpetually discharging a fresh fusilade. Both magazines disguised their real motives under a cloak of religious zeal and monarchical loyalty.

While Hunt did much to bring the hornet's nest about his ears, he was not wholly deserving of the amount, and not at all of the kind, of stinging calumny that he had to endure. Neither were the members of the Cockney School the only ones who provoked such antagonism from the same magazine. Other famous libels of _Blackwood's_ that should be mentioned to show the disposition of its controllers were the _Chaldee Manuscript_; the _Madonna of Dresden_ and other effusions of the "_Baron von Lauerwinckel_"; the _Diary_ and _Horae Sinicae of Ensign O'Doherty_; and the _Diary of William Wastle, Blackwood and Dr. Morris_. _Letter to Sir Walter Scott, Bart., on the Moral and other Characteristics of the Ebony and Shandrydan School_,[456] cites a full list of _Blackwood's_ victims. These, besides those of the Cockney School, were said to be Jeffrey, Professor Playfair, Professor Dugald Stewart, Professor Leslie, James Macintosh, Lord Brougham, Moore, Professor David Ricardo, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Pringle, Dalzell, Cleghorn, Graham, Sharpe, Jameson, and Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd. The characters in _Noctes Ambrosianae_, Ticklers, Scorpions and Shepherds, were said by the pamphleteer to respectively tickle, sting and stultify, and to make a business "of insulting worth, offending delicacy, caluminating genius, and outraging the decencies and violating all the sanctities of life." Their weapons were "loathsome billingsgate and brutality," and "sublime bathos." An interesting statement, not elsewhere found, is made by the anonymous author of the pamphlet that the proprietor of the Black Bull Inn imputed the death of his wife to the first volume of _Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk_, a series similar to the _Noctes Ambrosianae_. Sir Walter Scott is told that he cannot remain innocent if he remains indifferent to the machinations of the "Ebony and Shandrydan School"--as the writer pleases to call the _Blackwood's_ group. Another interesting pamphlet of like nature is _The Scorpion Critic Unmasked; or Animadversions on a Pretended Review of "Fleurs, a Poem, in Four Books," which appeared in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine for June, 1821, in a Letter to a Friend_.[457] _Blackwood's_ had called Nathaniel John Hollingsworth, the author of the poem, and others of his type, the "Leg of Mutton School."[458] Nothing in fact seems to have given this magazine so much malicious delight as to create schools, perhaps in a spirit of rivalry with the "Lake School" of the _Edinburgh Review_. In the preceding April the "Manchester School" had been presented by _Blackwood's_ to the public. Hollingsworth in turn created the "Scorpion School" in order to deride _Blackwood's_. Other pamphlets of the same kind were _Rebellion again Gulliver; or R-D-C-L-SM in Lilliput_. _A Poetical Fragment from a Lilliputian Manuscript_, an anonymous publication which appeared in Edinburgh in 1820; _Aspersions answered: an explanatory Statement, advanced to the Public at Large, and to Every Reader of The Quarterly Review in Particular_;[459] and _Another Article for the Quarterly Review_;[460] both by William Hone in reply to the charge of irreligion made by the _Quarterly_ against him.

William Blackwood, John Wilson or "Christopher North," Lockhart, and perhaps Maginn, share the blame severally of _Blackwood's_; while in the case of the _Quarterly_, to Gifford and Southey, already mentioned, must be added Sir Walter Scott and Croker. The two last certainly countenanced the actions of the others, even if they took no more active part. There seems to be no way of determining the individual authorship of the various articles. It was a secret jealously guarded at the time and it is unlikely that any further disclosures will come to light. The victims themselves hazarded as many guesses as more recent critics with no greater degree of certainty. Leigh Hunt thought that the articles were written by Sir Walter Scott;[461] Hazlitt said, "To pay those fellows _in their own coin_, the way would be to begin with Walter Scott _and have at his clump foot_;"[462] Charles Dilke thought that the articles were written by Lockhart with the encouragement of Scott;[463] Haydon thought that "Z" was Terry the actor, an intimate of the Blackwood party, who had been exasperated because Hunt had failed to notice him in _The Examiner_;[464] Shelley fancied that the articles in the _Quarterly_ were by Southey, and, on his denial, attributed them to Henry Hart Milman.[465] Mrs. Oliphant in her two ponderous volumes, _William Blackwood and His Sons_, practically asserts that "Z" was Lockhart.[466] If the extent of her research is to be the gauge of its value, her opinion is a very valuable one. Mr. Colvin advances the theory that "Z" was Wilson or Lockhart, possibly revised by William Blackwood.[467] Mr. Courthope thinks that Croker was the author of the articles on _Endymion_ in the _Quarterly_.[468] Mr. Herford thinks that the whole campaign against the Cockney School was "largely worked out" by Lockhart.[469]

* * * * *

Hunt, Shelley, Hazlitt and Keats were the chief targets in the Cockney School. The attacks on each of these are of such length as to require separate discussion and will be returned to later. Those who attained lesser notoriety were Charles Lamb, Haydon, Barry Cornwall, John Hamilton Reynolds, Cornelius Webb, Charles Wells, Charles Dilke, Charles Lloyd, P. G. Patmore and John Ketch (Abraham Franklin). Those who moved within the same circle and who may by attraction be considered Cockneys are Charles Cowden Clarke and his wife, Vincent Novello, Charles Armitage Brown, the Olliers, Horace and James Smith, Douglas Jerrold, Joseph Severn, Laman Blanchard, Thomas Noon Talfourd, Thomas Love Peacock, and perhaps Thomas Hood.

Charles Lamb was first attacked in 1820. He had written essays somewhat in the manner of Hunt and he was a contributor to the _London Magazine_, which had blundered by censuring Castlereagh, Canning, and Wilberforce. The much-despised Hazlitt was another of its force. Accordingly, "Elia" was pronounced a "Cockney Scribbler," _Christ's Hospital_ an essay full of offensive and reprehensible personalities,[470] and _All Fool's Day_ "mere inanity and very Cockneyism."[471] In April, 1822, _Blackwood's_ returned to the attack but with more than usual good nature. In _Noctes Ambrosianae_ of that month Tickler is made to say:

"Elia in his happiest moods delights me; he is a fine soul; but when
he is dull, his dullness sets human stupidity at defiance. He is like
a well-bred, ill-trained pointer. He has a fine nose, but he can't or
won't range. He always keeps close to your foot, and then he points
larks or tit-mice. You see him snuffing and snoking and brandishing
his tail with the most impassioned enthusiasm, and then drawn round
into a semi-circle he stands beautifully--dead set. You expect a
burst of partridges, or a towering cock-pheasant, when lo, and
behold, away flits a lark, or you discover a mouse's nest, or there
is absolutely nothing at all. Perhaps a shrew has been there the day
before. Yet if Elia were mine, I would not part with him, for all his
faults."

A few years later Lamb became one of _Blackwood's_ contributors. Two attacks on Lamb proceeded from the _Quarterly_. The _Confessions of a Drunkard_, the writer says, "affords a fearful picture of the consequences of intemperance which we have reason to know is a true tale."[472] In his _Progress of Infidelity_, Southey asserted that Elia's volume of essays wanted "only sounder religious feeling, to be as delightful as it is original."[473] Lamb's wrath had been slowly gathering under the strain of repeated attacks on Hunt, Hazlitt and himself. It culminated with Southey's article. In the _London Magazine_ of October, 1823, he repudiated at considerable length the compliments thrust upon him at the expense of his friends, and denied the arraignment of drunkenness and heterodoxy. Matters were then smoothed over between him and Southey through an explanation which his unfailing good nature could not resist.

Haydon was nick-named the "Raphael of the Cockneys."[474] Until the exhibition of _Christ's Entry into Jerusalem_ in Edinburgh in 1820, he underwent the same kind of persecution as his friends. His "greasy hair" was about as notorious as Hazlett's "pimpled face." But the picture converted _Blackwood's_ crew. They apologized and confessed that their misapprehensions had been due to the absurd style of laudation in _The Examiner_. Henceforward they acknowledged him to be "a high Tory and an aristocrat, and a sound Christian."[475]

Bryan Waller Procter, or Barry Cornwall, was satirized in _Blackwood's_ for his so-called effeminacy. In October, 1823, the following facetious passage occurs: "the merry thought of a chick--three tea-spoonsfulls of peas, the eighth part of a French roll, a sprig of cauliflower, and an almost imperceptible dew of parsley" would dine the author of _The Deluge_. The article on Shelley's _Posthumous Poems_ in the _Edinburgh_ of July, 1824, was attributed to Procter by _Blackwood's_ and assailed in a most disgusting manner. The article was by Hazlitt.

John Hamilton Reynolds was a friend of Keats, one of the _Young Poets_ reviewed by Hunt in _The Examiner_, and a contributor to the _London Magazine_. His two poems, _Eden of the Imagination_ and _Fairies_, showed Hunt's influence. In the former he had even dared to praise Hunt in the notes.

Cornelius Webb was the author of numerous poems which exhibit in a marked degree the Huntian peculiarities of diction pointed out in the first chapter. He is moreover responsible for the unfortunate lines so often quoted in derision by Blackwood's:

"Keats
The Muses' son of promise! and what feats
He yet may do."

His sonnets in the _Literary Pocket Book_ were thus reviewed in _Blackwood's_ of December, 1821: "Now, Cornelius Webbe is a Jaw-breaker. Let any man who desires to have his ivory dislodged, read the above sonnet to March. Or shall we call Cornelius, the grinder? After reading aloud these fourteen lines, we called in our Odontist, and he found that every tooth in our head was loosened, and a slight fracture in the jaw. 'My dearest Christopher', said the Odontist, in his wonted classical spirit, 'beware the Ides of March.' So saying, he bounced up in our faces and disappeared."

Charles Wells was a friend of Hazlitt and of Keats. In true Cockney fashion he sent the latter a sonnet and some roses and thus began the acquaintance. Dilke was a friend of Keats, a radical, and an independent critic in the manner of Hunt. Charles Lloyd was Lamb's friend, one of the contributors to the _Literary Pocket Book_ of 1820, and a poet of sentimental and descriptive propensities. P. G. Patmore was "Count Tims, the Cockney."[476] Although he was a correspondent of _Blackwood's_, his son has remarked that he was not _persona grata_, but was employed to secure news from London; and permitted to write only when he did not defend his friends too much.[477] "John Ketch" (Abraham Franklin) is mentioned by Lord Byron as one of the "Cockney Scribblers."[478] Thomas Hood, as brother-in-law of Reynolds, as assistant editor of the _London Magazine_, and as an imitator in a small degree in his early work of Lamb and of Hunt may be enumerated among the Cockneys, although he is not usually included. Laman Blanchard was the friend of Procter, Lamb and Hunt. He imitated Procter's _Dramatic Sketches_ and Lamb's _Essays_. Talfourd was a member of the circle and the friend and biographer of Lamb. He defended Edward Moxon when he was prosecuted for publishing _Queen Mab_. Peacock was the friend of Shelley. The Ollier brothers, publishers, introduced Keats, Shelley, Hunt, Lamb and Procter to the public.[479]

Although Byron was frequently at war with _Blackwood's_ and the _Quarterly_, and although he was closely associated with Shelley and Hunt, he was never stigmatized as a member of the Cockney School. Yet through his alliance with them he came in for some opprobrium that he would otherwise have escaped. _Blackwood's_ strove through ridicule to prevent any growth of familiarity with Hunt or his fraternity. Its attitude towards the dedication to Byron of the _Story of Rimini_ has already been mentioned. Hunt's statement already quoted on p. 95 that "for the drama, whatever good passages such a writer will always put forth, we hold that he (Byron) has no more qualification than we have" was a choice morsel for the Scotch birds of prey, enjoyed to the fullest extent in a review of _Lyndsay's Dramas of the Ancient World_:

"Prigs will be preaching--and nothing but conceit cometh out of
Cockaigne. What an emasculated band of dramatists have deployed upon
our boards. A pale-faced, sallow set, like the misses of some Cockney
boarding-school, taking a constitutional walk, to get rid of their
habits of eating lime out of the wall.... But it was reserved to the
spirit of atheism of an age, to talk of a Cockney writing a tragedy.
When the mind ceases to believe in a Providence, it can believe in
anything else; but the pious soul feels that while to dream, even in
sleep, that a Cockney had written a successful tragedy, would be
repugnant to reason; certainly a more successful tragedy could not be
imagined, from the utter destruction of Cockaigne and all its
inhabitants. An earthquake or a shower of lava would be too
complimentary to the Cockneys; but what do you think of a shower of
soot from a multitude of foul chimneys, and the smell of gas from
exploded pipes. Something might be made of the idea.... The truth is,
that these mongrel and doggerel drivellers have an instinctive
abhorrence of a true poet; and they all ran out like so many curs
baying at the feet of the Pegasus on which Byron rode ... and the
eulogists of homely, and fireside, and little back-parlour incest,
what could they imagine of the unseduceable spirit of the spotless
Angiolina?... When Elliston, ignorant of what one gentleman owes to
another, or driven by stupidity to forget it, brought the Doge on the
stage, how crowed the Bantam Cocks of Cockaigne to see it damned!...
But Manfred and the Doge are not dead; while all that small fry have
disappeared in the mud, and are dried up like so many tadpoles in a
ditch, under the summer drowth. 'Lord Byron,' quoth Mr. Leigh Hunt,
'has about as much dramatic genius as _ourselves_!' He might as well
have said, 'Lucretia had about as much chastity as my own heroine in
Rimini;' or, 'Sir Phillip Sidney was about as much of the gentleman
as myself!'"[480]

Byron's attitude toward the Cockney School was expressed in a letter written to John Murray during the Bowles controversy:

"With the rest of his (Hunt's) young people I have no acquaintance,
except through some things of theirs (which have been sent out
without my desire), and I confess that till I had read them I was not
aware of the full extent of human absurdity. Like Garrick's 'Ode to
Shakespeare,' _they_ '_defy criticism_.' These are of the personages
who decry Pope.... Mr. Hunt redeems himself by occasional beauties;
but the rest of these poor creatures seem so far gone that I would
not 'march through Coventry with them, that's flat!' were I in Mr.
Hunt's place. To be sure, he has 'led his ragamuffins where they will
be well peppered'; but a system-maker must receive all sorts of
proselytes. When they have really seen life--when they have felt
it--when they have travelled beyond the far distant boundaries of the
wilds of Middlesex--when they have overpassed the Alps of Highgate,
and traced to its sources the Nile of the New River--then, and not
till then, can it properly be permitted to them to despise Pope....
The grand distinction of the under forms of the new school of poets
is their _vulgarity_. By this I do not mean that they are coarse, but
'shabby-genteel,' as it is termed. A man may be _coarse_ and yet not
_vulgar_, and the reverse.... It is in their _finery_ that the new
school are _most_ vulgar, and they may be known by this at once; as
what we called at Harrow "A Sunday blood" might be easily
distinguished from a gentleman, although his clothes might be the
better cut, and his boots the best blackened of the two:--probably
because he made the one or cleaned the other, with his own hands....
In the present case, I speak of writing, not of persons. Of the
latter I know nothing; of the former I judge as it is found."[481]

Byron's opinion of Keats is too well known to need repetition. He thought there was hope for Barry Cornwall if "he don't get spoiled by green tea and the praises of Pentonville and Paradise Row. The pity of these men is, that they never lived in _high life_ nor in _solitude_: there is no medium for the knowledge of the _busy_ or the _still_ world. If admitted into high life for a season, it is merely as _spectators_--they form no part of the mechanism thereof."[482]

_Blackwood's_ of December, 1822, in a review of _The Liberal_, advised Byron to "cut the Cockney"--"by far the most unaccountable of God's works." Hunt is denominated "the menial of a lord." When Byron notwithstanding its advice continued his "conjunction with these deluded drivellers of Cockaigne" _Blackwood's_ grew savage towards the peer himself: it is said that he suffered himself

"to be so enervated by the unworthy Delilahs which have enslaved his
imagination, as to be reduced to the foul office of displaying blind
buffooneries before the Philistines of Cockaigne ... I feel a moral
conviction that his lordship must have taken the Examiner, the
Liberal, the Rimini, the Round Table, as his model, and endeavored
to write himself down to the level of the capacities and the swinish
tastes of those with whom he has the misfortune, originally, I
believe, from charitable motives, to associate. This is the most
charitable hypothesis which I can frame. Indeed there are some verses
which have all the appearance of having been interpolated by the King
of the Cockneys."[483]

When Byron and Hunt had separated, _Blackwood's_ attempted to reinstate Byron in his former position by declaring that he had been disgusted beyond endurance on Hunt's arrival in Italy and that he had cut him very soon in a "paroxysm of loathing."[484]

* * * * *

The declaration of war between the Cockneys and the Tory press was made with a review of the _Story of Rimini_ in the _Quarterly_ of January, 1816. From this time on Hunt was the choice prey of the two magazines, and others were attacked principally on account of him, or reached through him. Hunt's writings were termed "eruptions of a disease" with which he insists upon "inoculating mankind;" his language "an ungrammatical, unauthorized, chaotic jargon." _Blackwood's_ of October, 1817, contained the first of the long series of abusive articles which appeared in its columns. Hazlitt in the _Edinburgh Review_ in June of the preceding year had acclaimed the _Story of Rimini_ to be "a reminder of the pure and glorious style that prevailed among us before French modes and French methods of criticism." In it he had discovered a resemblance to Chaucer, to the voluptuous pathos of Boccaccio and to the laughing graces of Ariosto. To offset such statements _Blackwood's_ dubbed the new school the "Cockney School" and made Hunt its chief doctor and professor. (Later, in 1823, _Blackwood's_ proudly claimed the honor of christening and said that the _Quarterly_ used the epithet only when it had become a part of English criticism.) It declared the dedication to Byron an insult and the poem the product of affectation and gaudiness and continued:

"The beaux are attorney's apprentices, with chapeau bras and Limerick
gloves--fiddlers, harp teachers, and clerks of genius: the belles are
faded, fan-twinkling spinsters, prurient vulgar misses from school,
and enormous citizen's wives. The company are entertained with
luke-warm negus, and the sounds of a paltry piano forte.... His
poetry resembles that of a man who has kept company with
kept-mistresses. His muse talks indelicately like the tea-sipping
milliner's girl. Some excuse for her there might have been, had she
been hurried away by imagination or passion; but with her, indecency
seems a disease, she appears to speak unclean things from perfect
inanition." Hunt "would fain be always tripping and waltzing, and he
is very sorry that he cannot be allowed to walk about in the morning
with yellow breeches and flesh-colored silk stockings. He sticks an
artificial rosebud in his button hole in the midst of winter. He
wears no neckcloth, and cuts his hair in imitation of the prints of
Petrarch."

Nature in the eyes of a Cockney was said to consist only of "green fields, jaunty streams, and o'er-arching leafiness;" no mountains were higher than Highgate-hill nor streams more pastoral than the Serpentine River.[485] _Blackwood's_ was near the truth in its criticism of Hunt's conception of nature. While his appreciation was very genuine, it was restricted to rural or suburban scenes, "of the town, towny."[486] The scale was that of the window garden or a flower pot. Who but he could rhapsodize over a cut flower or a bit of green; or could speak in spring "of being gay and vernal and daffodilean?"[487] Yet he produced some delightful rural poetry. Take this for instance:

"You know the rural feeling, and the charm
That stillness has for a world-fretted ear,
'Tis now deep whispering all about me here,
With thousand tiny bushings, like a swarm
Of atom bees, or fairies in alarm
Or noise of numerous bliss from distant spheres."[488]

The general characteristics of the school, briefly summarized, were said to be ignorance and vulgarity, an entire absence of religion, a vague and sour Jacobinism for patriotism, admiration of Chaucer and Spenser when they resemble Hunt, and extreme moral depravity and obscenity. November, 1817, of _Blackwood's_ contained the notorious accusation against the _Story of Rimini_ of immorality of purpose.[489] The poem was called "the genteel comedy of incest." Francesca's sin was declared voluntary and her sufferings sentimental. The changes from the historical version, an espousal by proxy instead of betrothal, the omission of deformity, the substitution of the duel for murder, and the happy opening, were pronounced wilful perversions for the furtherance of corruption. Ford's treatment of the same theme much more elevated. Hunt's defense was that the catastrophe was Francesca's sufficient punishment.[490] In May, 1818, the same charge was repeated: "No woman who has not either lost her chastity, or is desirous of losing it, ever read the 'Story of Rimini' without the flushings of shame and of self-reproach."

_The Examiner_ of November 2 and 16, 1817, quoted extracts from the first of these articles and called upon the author to avow himself; otherwise to an "utter disregard of _Truth_ and Decency, he adds the height of Meanness and COWARDICE."[491] As might have been expected, this demand brought forth nothing more than a disavowal from the London publishers who handled _Blackwood's_ of all responsibility in the matter. June 14, 1818, _The Examiner_ assailed the editor of the _Quarterly_ as a government critic who disguised a political quarrel in literary garb, as a sycophant to power and wealth:

"Grown old in the service of corruption, he drivels on to the last
with prostituted impotence, and shameless effrontery; salves a meagre
reputation for wit, by venting the driblets of his spleen and
impertinence on others; answers their arguments by confuting himself;
mistakes habitual obtuseness of intellect for a particular acuteness,
not to be imposed upon by shallow pretensions; unprincipled rancor
for zealous loyalty; and the irritable, discontented, vindictive, and
peevish effusions of bodily pain and mental infirmity, for proofs of
refinement of taste and strength of understanding."

This condescension to a use of his enemies' weapons only weakened Hunt's position. Yet in the light of the secrecy maintained at the time and the mystery surrounding the matter ever since, it is interesting to read _Blackwood's_ contorted reply to Hunt's demand for an open fight, written as late as January, 1826:

"Nor let it be said that, either on this or any other occasion, the
moral Satyrists (sic) in this magazine ever wished to remain unknown.
How, indeed, could they wish for what they well knew was impossible?
All the world has all along known the names of the gentlemen who have
uttered our winged words. Nor did it ever, for one single moment,
enter into the head of any one of them to wish--not to scorn
concealment. To gentlemen, too, they at all times acted like
gentlemen; but was it ever dreamt by the wildest that they were to
consider as such the scum of the earth? 'If I but knew who was my
slanderer,' was at one time the ludicrous skraigh of the convicted
Cockney. Why did he not ask? and what would he have got by asking?
Shame and confusion of face--unanswerable argument and cruel
chastisement. For before one word would have been deigned to the
sinner, he must have eaten--and the bitter roll is yet ready for
him--all the lies he had told for the last twenty years, and must
either have choked or been kicked."

In January, 1818, _Blackwood's_ issued a manifesto of their future campaign. The Keatses, Shelleys, and Webbes, were to be taken in turn. The charges of profligacy and obscenity against Hunt's poem were repeated, but it was emphatically stated that there was no implication made in reference to his private character--an ominous statement that any one with any knowledge of _Blackwood's_ usual methods could only construe into a warning that such an implication would speedily follow. The article was signed "Z," a shadowy personage who sorrowfully called himself the "present object" of Hunt's resentment and dislike. He seems to have expected gratitude and affection in return for articles that would compare favorably with the most scurrilous billingsgate of any of the Humanistic controversies. In May, 1818, with due ceremony, Hunt was proclaimed "King of the Cockneys" and editor of the Cockney Court-gazette. His kingdom was the "Land of Cockaigne," a borrowing, most probably, from the thirteenth century satire by that name. Keats's sonnet containing the line "He of the rose, the violet, the spring" became the official Cockney poem--by an "amiable but infatuated bardling." John Hunt was made Prince John. With the lapse of time Hunt's crimes seem to have multiplied. He is called a lunatic, a libeller, an abettor of murder and of assassination, a coward, an incendiary, a Jacobin, a plebeian and a foe to virtue. He is instructed, if sickened with the sins and follies of mankind, to withdraw

"to the holy contemplation of your own divine perfections, and there
'perk up with timid mouth' 'and lamping eyes' (as you have it) upon
what to you is dearer and more glorious than all created things
besides, till you become absorbed in your own identity--motionless,
mighty, and magnificent, in the pure calm of Cockneyism ... instead
of rousing yourself from your lair, like some noble beast when
attacked by the hunter, you roll yourself round like a sick hedgehog,
that has crawled out into the 'crisp' gravel walk round your box at
Hampstead, and oppose only the feeble pricks of your hunch'd-up back
to the kicks of any one who wishes less to hurt you, than to drive
you into your den."

The _Quarterly_ of the same month contained the notorious review of _Foliage_. Southey, in a counterfeited Cockney style, contorts Hunt's devotion to his leafy luxuries, his flowerets, wine, music and other social joys into Epicureanism[492] and like unsound principles. He even goes so far as to accuse him of incest and adultery in his private life. There are disguised but unmistakable references to Keats and to Shelley; the latter is credited with evil doings that fall little short of machinations with the devil. The volume of poems, which was the ostensible pretext for this parade of foul slander, not a word of which was true, has, Southey says, richness of language and picturesqueness of imagery.[493] The July number of _Blackwood's_ went a step beyond Southey and identified the characters of the _Story of Rimini_ with Hunt and his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Kent. After ostentatiously giving currency to the scandal, "Z" then proceeds to deny the rumor--which had no existence save in the minds of Hunt's vilifiers--in order to preserve immunity from libel. At the time that Lamb replied to Southey in 1823 he took up these charges made against Hunt in 1818. He said:

"I was admitted to his household for several years, and do most
solemnly aver that I believe him to be in his domestic relations as
correct as any man. He chose an ill-judged subject for a poem.... In
spite of 'Rimini,' I must look upon its author as a man of taste and
a poet. He is better than so; he is one of the most cordial-minded
men that I ever knew, and matchless as a fireside companion. I do not
mean to affront or wound your feelings when I say that in his more
genial moods, he has often reminded me of you."[494]

A facetious bit of prose _On Sonnet Writing_ and a _Sonnet on Myself_ in _Blackwood's_ of April, 1819, parodied excellently the Cockney conceit and mannerisms. The September number contrasted Henry Hunt, the representative of the Cockney School of Politics, with Leigh Hunt, of the Cockney School of Poetry; resenting loudly the claim of the two to prominence for "even Douglasses never had more than one Bell-the-cat at a time." While Henry Hunt "the brawny white feather of Cockspur-street" addresses street mobs, the other Hunt, "the lank and sallow hypochondriac of the 'leafy rise' and 'farmy fields' of Hampstead," "the whining milk-sop sonneteer of the Examiner" is said to speak to a "sorely depressed remnant of 'single gentlemen' in lodgings, and single ladies we know not where--a generation affected with headaches, tea-drinking and all the nostalgia of the nerves." It is hardly necessary to add that there was no connection whatsoever between the two men.

_Blackwood's_ of October, 1819, announced _Foliage_ to be a posthumous publication of Hunt's, presented to the public by his three friends, Keats, Haydon and Novello. An affecting picture is drawn of the now-departed Hunt in his once familiar costume of dressing-gown, yellow breeches and red slippers, sipping tea, playing whist and writing sonnets. His statement in the preface that a "love of sociability, of the country, and the fine imagination of the Greeks" had prompted the poems is greatly ridiculed. The first is said to have caused his death by an over-indulgence in tea-drinking; his feeling for nature is said to be limited to the lawns, stiles and hedges of Hampstead and his knowledge of the imagination of the Greeks to quotations. The _Sonnet On Receiving a Crown of Ivy from Keats_ came in for especial derision--"a blister clapped on his head" would have been considered more appropriate.

Hunt's _Literary Pocket Books_ for 1819 and 1820 were reviewed in _Blackwood's_ in December, 1819, in a remarkably kind article. They are recommended as worth three times the price. The reviewer, who was no other than "Christopher North," stated that he had purchased six copies. _Blackwood's_ of September, 1820, reviewed _The Indicator_; of December, 1821, the 1822 _Literary Pocket Book_; the last contained coarse and unkind allusions to Hunt's health. It declared the production of sonnets in London and its suburbs about equal to the number of births and deaths. In reply, _The Examiner_ of December 16, 1821, in an article entitled _Modern Criticism_, italicised extracts from _Blackwood's_ to bring out peculiarities of grammar and diction. _Blackwood's_ of January, 1822, contained a sonnet which it was pretended was Hunt's New Year's greeting, but which was instead a clever parody on his sonnet-style.

The issue of the next month announced the triumvirate of _The Liberal_ and, through Byron's "noble generosity," Hunt's departure with his wife and "little Johnnys" upon a "perilous voyage on the un-cockney ocean.... He and his companions will now, like his own Nereids,

turn
And toss upon the ocean's lifting billows,
Making them _banks and_ pillows,
Upon whose _springiness_ they lean and ride;
Some with an _inward back_; some _upward-eyed_,
Feeling the sky; and some with _sidelong hips_,
O'er which the surface of the water slips."

The first number of the _Noctes Ambrosianae_ appeared in March. The following passage refers to the launching of _The Liberal_ in a dialogue between the Editor and O'Doherty:

O. Hand me the lemons. This holy alliance of Pisa will be a queer
affair. _The Examiner_ has let down its price from a tenpenny to a
sevenpenny. They say the Editor here is to be one of that faction,
for they must publish in London, of course.

Ed. Of course, but I doubt if they will be able to sell many. Byron
is a prince, but these dabbling dogglerers destroy every dish they
dip in.

O. Apt alliteration's artful aid.

Ed. Imagine Shelly [sic], with his spavin, and Hunt, with his
staingalt, going in harness with such a caperer as Byron,
three-a-breast. He'll knock the wind out of them both the first
canter.

O. 'Tis pity Keats is dead.--I suppose you could not venture to
publish a sonnet in which he is mentioned now? The _Quarterly_ (who
killed him, as Shelly says) would blame you.

Ed. Let's hear it. Is it your own?

O. No; 'twas written many months ago by a certain great Italian
genius, who cuts a figure about the London routs--one Fudgiolo.

Ed. Try to recollect it. (Here follows the sonnet.)

_Blackwood's_ of December, 1822, had passages on the Cockney School in _Noctes Ambrosianae_. Number VII. of the series of articles on its members reviewed Hunt's _Florentine Lovers_, or, in their phrasing, his _Art of Love_, the story of which is wilfully misrepresented. Hunt is declared "the most irresistible knight-errant errotic extant ... the most contemptible little capon of the bantam breed that ever vainly dropped a wing, or sidled up to a partlet. He can no more crow than a hen. Byron makes love like Sir Peter, Moore like a tom-tit and Hunt like a bantam." The writer then charges Hunt with irreligion, indecency, sensuality and licentiousness. He is called "A Fool" and an "exquisite idiot." Such a burst of rage on the part of the anti-Cockneys, after their wrath had begun to cool as seen in the review of the _Literary Pocket Book_, was doubtless due to Hunt's association in _The Liberal_ with Byron: "What can Byron mean by patronizing a Cockney?... by far the most unaccountable of God's works ... a scavenger raking in the filth of the common sewers and stews, for a few gold pieces thrown down by a nobleman.... But that Satan should stoop to associate with an incubus, shows that there is degeneracy in hell." The tirade closes with a poem of six stanzas of which this is a fair sample:

"The kind Cockney Monarch, he bids us farewell
Taking his place in the Leghorn-bound smack--
In the smack, in the smack--Ah! will he ne'er come back?"

At the appearance of the last number of _The Liberal_, _Blackwood's_ rejoiced thus:

"Their hum, to be sure, is awfully subdued. They remind me of a
mutchkin of wasps in a bottle, all sticking to each other--heads and
tails--rumps glued with treacle and vinegar, wax and pus--helpless,
hopeless, stingless, wingless, springless--utterly abandoned of
air--choked and choking--mutually entangling and entangled--and
mutually disgusting and disgusted--the last blistering ferment of
incarnate filth working itself into one mass of oblivion in one
bruised and battered sprawl of swipes and venom."[495]

_Blackwood's_ of October, 1823, declared Hazlitt to be the most loathsome and Hunt the most ludicrous of the group. Before the close of the year Hunt threatened the magazine with a suit for libel. This threat did not prevent in January a notice of Hunt's _Ultra-Crepidarius_, a satire on Gifford much in the vein and style of the _Feast of the Poets_. Mercury and Venus come to earth in search of the former's lost shoe. On their arrival they discover that it has been converted by command of the gods into a man named Gifford. The satire is facetiously attributed by _Blackwood's_ to Master Hunt, aged ten; a "small, smart, smattering satirist of an air-haparent ... Cockney chick." The parent is reproached for putting a child in such a position.

"Had Leigh Hunt, the papa, boldly advanced on any great emergency, at
the peril of his life and crown, to snatch the legitimate issue of
his own loins from the shrivelled hands of some blear-eyed old
beldam, into whose small cabbage-garden Maximilian had headed a
forlorn hope, good and well, and beautiful; but not so, when a
stalwart and cankered carl like Mr. Gifford, with his quarter-staff,
belabours the shoulders of his Majesty, and sire shoves son between
himself and the Pounder ... such pusillanimity involves forfeiture of
the Crown, and from this hour we declare Leigh dethroned, and the
boy-bard of _Ultra-Crepidarius_ King of Cockaigne."

Wearying of this make-believe, the reviewer discards such a possibility of authorship and considers Hunt's grandfather, a legendary personage whose age is put at ninety-six and who is given the name of Zachariah Hunt: "What a gross, vulgar, leering old dog it is! Was ever the couch of the celestials so profaned before! One thinks of some aged cur, with mangy back, glazed eye-balls dropping rheum, and with most disconsolate muzzard muzzling among the fleas of his abominable loins, by some accident lying upon the bed where Love and Beauty are embracing and embraced." As a final potentiality the reviewer deliberates whether Hunt by any possibility could have been the author and closes with this peroration: "There he goes soaking, and swaling, and straddling up the sky, like Daniel O'Rouke on goose back!... Toes in if you please. The goose is galloping--why don't you stand in the stirrups?... Alas Pegasus smells his native marshes; instead of making for Olympus, he is off in a wallop to the fens of Lincolnshire! Bellerophon has lost his seat--now he clings desperately by the tail--a single feather holds him from eternity."

Article VIII of the regular series, reviewing Hunt's _Bacchus in Tuscany_, appeared in _Blackwood's_ of August, 1825. His allegiance to Apollo in Cockaigne is declared to have been changed to Bacchus in Tuscany, and his usual beverage of weak tea to a diet of wine on which he swills like a hippopotamus. He is depicted as Jupiter Tonans and his manner to Hebe is compared with a "natty Bagman to the barmaid of the Hen and Chickens." The same number noticed Sotheby's translation of Homer. The opportunity was not lost to refer unfavorably to Hunt's translations of the same in _Foliage_.

_The Rebellion of the Beasts_; or _The Ass is Dead! Long Live the Ass!!! By a Late Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge_, with the motto "A man hath pre-eminence above a beast," was published anonymously by J. & H. L. Hunt in London in 1825. There is every reason to believe that it was by Hunt, although he does not mention it elsewhere. It is an exceedingly clever satire on monarchy and far surpasses anything else of the kind that he ever did. Had the Tories of Edinburgh suspected the author it would probably have made them apoplectic with rage.

With _Lord Byron and Some of His Contemporaries_ the rage of the two periodicals reached a grand climax and seemingly exhausted itself. The _Quarterly_ in March of the same year in which it appeared said: "The last wiggle of expiring imbecility appears in these days to be a volume of personal Reminiscences." It characterized the book as a melancholy product of coxcombry and cockneyism: as "dirty gabble about men's wives and men's mistresses--and men's lackeys, and even the mistresses of the lackeys:" as "the miserable book of a miserable man; the little airy fopperies of its manner are like the fantastic trip and convulsive simpers of some poor worn-out wanton, struggling between famine and remorse, leering through her tears." _Blackwood's_ of the same month pictured Hunt riding in the tourney lists of Cockaigne to the tune of Cock-a-doodle-doo. It accused him, besides those misdemeanors many times previously exploited, of clumsy casuistry, of falsehood regarding his transaction with Colburn, of ill-breeding in dragging his wife into such a book. The following is the culmination of the author's anger:

"Mr. Hunt, who to the prating pertness of the parrot, the chattering
impudence of the magpie--to say nothing of the mowling malice of the
monkey--adds the hissiness of the bill-pouting gander, and the
gobble-bluster of the bubbly-jock--to say nothing of the forward
valour of the brock or badger--threatens death and destruction to all
writers of prose or verse, who shall dare to say white is the black
of his eye, or that his book is not like a vase lighted up from
within with the torch of truth ... Frezeland Bantam is the vainest
bird that attempts to crow; and by and by our feverish friend comes
out into the light, and begins to trim his plumage! His toilet over
he basks on the ditch side, and has not the smallest doubt in the
world that he is a Bird of Paradise."

The _Literary Gazette_ joined in the hue-and-cry against "the pert vulgarity and miserable low-mindedness of Cockney-land," against "the disagreeable, envious, bickering, hating, slandering, contemptible, drivelling and be-devilling wretches."[496] _Blackwood's_ of February, 1830, in a review of Moore's _Life, Letters and Journals of Lord Byron_, satirizes the conversational habits of the Cockneys "who all keep chattering during meals and after them, like so many monkeys, emulous and envious of each other's eloquence, and pulling out with their paws fetid observations from their cheek-pouches, which are nuts to them, though instead of kernel, nothing but snuff."

Not only did the articles in _Blackwood's_ cease after this last, but in 1834 a full and complete apology was tendered Hunt by Christopher North:

"And Shelley truly loved Leigh Hunt. Their friendship was honorable
to both, for it was as disinterested as sincere; and I hope Gurney
will let a certain person in the City understand that I treat his
offer of a reviewal of Mr. Hunt's _London Journal_ with disdain. If
he has anything to say against us or that gentleman, either
conjunctly or severally, let him out with it in some other channel;
and I promise him a touch and taste of the crutch. He talks to me of
_Maga's_ desertion of principle; but if he were a Christian--nay, a
man--his heart and his head would tell him that the Animosities are
mortal, but the Humanities live for ever--and that Leigh Hunt has
more talent in his little finger than the puling prig, who has taken
upon himself to lecture Christopher North in a scrawl crawling with
forgotten falsehoods."[497]

Professor Wilson's invitation to Hunt to contribute to his magazine was declined politely but firmly. Leigh Hunt wrote to Charles Cowden Clarke: "_Blackwood's_ and I, poetically, are becoming the best friends in the world. The other day there was an Ode in _Blackwood_ in honour of the memory of Shelley; and I look for one of Keats. I hope this will give you faith in glimpses of the Golden Age."[498] Nowhere does Hunt show resentment or malice for the sufferings of years. Yet Mrs. Oliphant, in her advocacy of the Blackwood group, goes the length of saying that he displayed "feebleness of mind and body," "petty meannesses," "unwillingness or incapacity to take a high view even of friends or benefactors," a lightheartedness and frivolity, and "enduring spite." She grudgingly admits his "almost feminine grace and charm." She says that he thought his friends deserved only "casual thanks when they did what was but their manifest duty ... bitter and spiteful satire when they attended to their own affairs instead." She makes a radically false statement when she says that he defended Byron, Shelley, Keats, Moore, and many others in _The Examiner_, but found an opportunity to say an evil word of most of them afterwards; and that when _Blackwood's_ or the _Quarterly_ attacked him, he was convinced that "it must be really one of his friends who was being struck at through him."[499]

The _Quarterly_ delayed longer in assuming a friendly attitude. It remained silent until 1867, when Bulwer, in a comparison of Hunt and Hazlitt, conceded to the former a gracefulness and kindliness of disposition, a smoothness of tone and delicacy of finish in his writing. There was no formal apology as in the case of _Blackwood's_.

Carlyle says that Hunt suffered an "obloquy and calumny through the Tory press--perhaps a greater quantity of baseness, persevering, implacable calumny, than any other living writer has undergone; which long course of hostility ... may be regarded as the beginning of his worst distresses, and a main cause of them down to this day."[500] Macaulay said: "There is hardly a man living whose merits have been so grudgingly allowed, and whose faults have been so cruelly expiated."[501] For a period of more than a quarter of a century, from the beginning of the crusade against him until about 1845, partly as the result of the misrepresentation of the press, and partly as a natural consequence of his own foibles and early blunders, a pretty general antagonism existed against him. At the end of that time his honesty and talents were recognized and rewarded publicly by the government. And the public has come more and more to esteem his personal character.

* * * * *