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
"mean in its subserviency to the follies of the day, very miserably
merry in its fuss and stories, extremely furious in politics, and
quite as feeble in criticism. You are invited to a literary
conversation, and you find nothing but scandal and commonplace. There
is a flourish of trumpets, and enter Tom Thumb. There is an
earthquake and a worm is thrown up.... The gentleman who until lately
conducted the THEATRICAL DEPARTMENT in the _News_ will criticise the
Theatre in the EXAMINER; and as the public have allowed the
possibility of IMPARTIALITY in that department, we do not see why the
same possibility may not be obtained in POLITICS."
Then followed a declaration against party as a factor in politics: party,
it was declared, should not exist "abstracted from its utility"; in the
present day every man must belong to some class; "he is either Pittite or
Foxite, Windhamite, Wilberforcite or Burdettite; though, at the same time,
two thirds of these disturbers of coffee-houses might with as much reason
call themselves Hivites, or Shunamites, or perhaps Bedlamites."[23]
Although _The Examiner_ thus firmly announced its intentions, nevertheless
in the heat of political contest it soon became the organ of a group of
men known as "reformers," who were laboring and clamoring for
constitutional and administrative improvement. It became the avowed enemy
of the Tory party and its journals, and in particular of the ministry
during the long Tory ascendancy; the enemy, at times, of royalty itself.
The prospectus likewise announced an intention to reform the manners and
morals of the age. Hunt could write a sermon with the same ease as a song
or a satire. Horse-racing, cock-fighting and prize-fighting were
condemned; most of all the publication of scandal and crime. A passage on
advertisements is humorous and still of living interest:
"the public shall neither be tempted to listen to somebody in the
shape of wit who turns out to be a lottery-keeper, nor seduced to
hear a magnificent oration which finishes by retreating into a
peruke, or rolling off into a blacking ball ... and as there is
perhaps about one person in a hundred who is pleased to see two or
three columns occupied with the mutabilities of cotton and the
vicissitudes of leather, the proprietors will have as little to do
with bulls and raw-hides, as with lottery-men and wig-makers."