"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