Leigh Hunt's Relations with Byron, Shelley and Keats — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Leigh Hunt's Relations with Byron, Shelley and Keats
John Stuart Mill · en
It was said that the chief offense was given by the statement that "this
'Adonis in loveliness' was a corpulent man of fifty." The article,
although true, was of doubtful expediency and offensively violent and
personal. Further, the unremitting attacks of _The Examiner_ had been
neither dignified nor charitable in their searchlight penetration into the
Prince's private affairs.[31] An indictment for libel naturally followed
at once. Lord Brougham's "masterly defense"[32] failed to avert the
determined efforts of the prosecution to make an example of the editor and
the publisher of _The Examiner_. They were sentenced to the imprisonment
and fine already mentioned. They refused all overtures for alleviation of
the sentence:--overtures from the government; from the Whigs who, in the
person of Perry of the _Morning Chronicle_, proposed to obtain a
compromise from the prosecution by threatening the Regent with the
publication of state secrets from friends; and even from a juror who
offered to pay the fine. Leigh Hunt wrote: "I am an Englishman setting an
example to my children and my country; and it would be hard, under all
these circumstances, if I could not suffer my extremity rather than
disgrace myself by effeminate lamentation or worse compromise."[33] The
two Hunts thought that the serving of the sentence would be beneficial to
the liberal cause, particularly in increasing the freedom of the press.
The general method of _The Examiner_ was vigorous attack. There was no
circumlocution, no mincing of language, but aggressive candour, and, when
it was considered necessary, wholesale censure and vituperation. A typical
illustration is given in this passage, describing a dinner of the Common
Council:
"It is the fashion just now to call Bonaparte Antichrist, the Beast
with Seven Heads and Ten Horns, ... but if you wish to see those who
have the 'real mark of the beast' upon them, go to a City dinner,
and after battles for trout and the buffetings for turtle, after the
rattling of wine glasses and plethoric throats, after the swillings
and the gormandizings, and the maudlin hobs-and-nobs, and the
disquisitions on smothered rabbits, and the bloated hectics, and the
blinking eyes and slurred voices, and the hiccups, the rantings, and
the roars, hear an unwieldy Loan-jobber descanting on our Glorious
King and Unshaken Constitution. The stranger, that after this sight,
goes to see the beasts in the Tower, is an enemy to all true
climax."[34]