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Leigh Hunt
(1784 - 1859) U.K.

Leigh Hunt

Poet, essayist

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Convicted for a libel against the Prince Regent in his Liberal newspaper The Examiner, he was imprisoned in 1813. The friend, and later enemy of Byron, he also knew Keats and Shelley. His verse is little appreciated today, but he influenced the Romantics, and his book on London The Town (1848), as well as his Autobiography with reminiscences of friends and contemporaries (1850) survive and are very well known.

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From Autobiography of Leigh Hunt, Smith and Elder, 1870, p 75

" If I had reaped no other benefit from Christ Hospital, the school would be ever dear to me from the recollection of the friendships I formed in it, and of the first heavenly taste it gave me of that most spiritual of the affections... If ever I tasted a disembodied transport on earth, it was in those friendships which I entertained at school, before I dreamt of any maturer feeling.

I shall never forget the impression it made on me. I loved my friend for his gentleness, his candor, his truth, his good repute, his freedom even from my own livelier manner, his calm and reasonable kindness. It was not any particular talent that attracted me to him, or anything striking whatsoever. I should say, in one word, it was his goodness.

Leigh HuntI doubt whether he ever had a conception of a tithe of the regard and respect I entertained for him; and I smile to think of the perplexity (though he never showed it) which he probably felt sometimes at my enthusiastic expressions; for I thought him a kind of angel.

It is no exaggeration to say, that, take away the unspiritual part of it-the genius and the knowledge-and there is no height of conceit indulged in by the most romantic character in Shakespeare, which surpassed what I felt towards the merits I ascribed to him, and the delight which I took in his society.

With the other boys I played antics, and rioted in fantastic jests; but in his society, or whenever I thought of him, I fell into a kind of Sabbath state of bliss; and I am sure I could have died for him.

I experienced this delightful affection towards three successive schoolfellows, till two of them had for some time gone out into the world and forgotten me; but it grew less with each, and in more than one instance became rivalled by a new set of emotions, especially in regard to the last, for I fell in love with his sister-at least, I thought so.

But on the occurrence of her death, not long after, I was startled at finding myself assume an air of greater sorrow than I felt, and at being willing to be relieved by the sight of the first pretty face that turned towards me.... My friend, who died himself not long after his quitting the University, was of a German family in the service of the court, very refined and musical."

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