Leigh Hunt's Relations with Byron, Shelley and Keats
John Stuart Mill · en
more abundant in exquisite, cordial, and most poetic associations." He
characterized Southey's reviews as cant, Gifford's as bitter commonplace
and Croker's as pettifogging.
_Blackwood's_ reviewed _Adonais_ and _The Cenci_ in December, 1821. The
Della Cruscans were reported to have come again from "retreats of Cockney
dalliance in the London suburbs" and "by wainloads from Pisa." The
Cockneys were said to hate everything that was good and true and
honorable, all moral ties and Christian principles, and to be steeped in
desperate licentiousness. _Adonais_ is fifty-five stanzas of
"unintelligible stuff" made up of every possible epithet that the poet has
been able to "conglomerate in his piracy through the Lexicon." The sense
has been wholly subordinated to the rhymes. The author is a "glutton of
names and colours" and has accomplished no more than might be done on such
subjects as Mother Goose, Waterloo or Tom Thumb. Two cruel and loathsome
parodies follow: _Wouther the city marshal broke his leg_ and an _Elegy on
My Tom Cat_, which, it is claimed, are less nonsensical, verbose and
inflated than _Adonais_. _The Cenci_ is "a vulgar vocabulary of rottenness
and reptilism" in an "odiferous, colorific and daisy-enamoured style." It
is regretted by the writer that it is impossible to believe that Shelley's
reason is unsettled, for this would be the best apology for the
poem.[517]
When _The Liberal_ was organized Shelley was spoken of thus:
"But Percy Bysshe Shelly has now published a long series of poems,
the only object of which seems to be the promotion of _atheism_ and
_incest_; and we can no longer hesitate to avow our belief, that he
is as worthy of co-operating with the King of Cockaigne, as he is
unworthy of co-operating with Lord Byron. Shelley is a man of genius,
but he has no sort of sense or judgment. He is merely 'an inspired
idiot.' Leigh Hunt is a man of talents, but vanity and vulgarity
neutralize all his efforts to pollute the public mind. Lord Byron we
regard not only as a man of lofty genius, but of great shrewdness and
knowledge of the world. What can HE seriously hope from associating
his name with such people as these?"[518]
As in the case of Keats, _Blackwood's_ did not have the decency to desist
from its indecent articles after Shelley's death. September, 1824, this
vulgar ridicule of the two dead poets appeared in answer to Bryan Waller
Procter's review of Shelley's poems in the preceding number of the
_Edinburgh Review_: