Recollections of Writers
Leigh Hunt to Charles Cowden Clarke, 11 February [1834]
Ever Dear Clarke and Vincent,—I have been going to write to Frith St. not
only for the last ten days, but for the last ten weeks; but my health is so
unceasingly tried by my pen, that when necessity allows me to lay it down, it costs
me such efforts to resume it, as must throw themselves on the indulgence of kind
friends. I rejoiced to hear of the intention about Chaucer, but so far from wondering at your leaving out
the passages you speak of, I may perhaps bespeak, ![]()
| 244 | RECOLLECTIONS OF WRITERS | |
![]()
your
astonishment in return when I tell you, that I am not sure I have ever entirely read even the stories in question; I mean those in which
Swift is horribly
mixed up with La Fontaine; so much do I
revolt from those kind of degrading impertinences, in proportion to the
voluptuousness I am prepared to license. And yet I ought to beg pardon of divine
Chaucer for using such words; for his sociality
condescended to the grossness of the time, and was doubtless superior to it, in a
certain sense, at the moment it included it in his good-natured universality. They
may even have been salutary, for what I know, by reason of certain subtle meetings
of extremes between grossness and refinement, which I cannot now speak of.
What good things they were, Clarke, in some of those verses you sent me; and yet what a strange
fellow you are, who with such a feeling of the poetical, and a nice sense of music,
can never write a dozen lines together without committing a false
quantity—leaving out some crotchets of your bar. You almost make me begin to
think that Chaucer wrote in the same manner,
and not, as I have fondly imagined, with syllabical perfection. I am glad you did
not dislike my criticism; and you too, dear Vincent. I send Clarke one or two more, which
I have cut out of periodicals. Item, another True
Sun, merely because it contains a mention of him, and may amuse him in
the rest. He will see by it that Christianity is getting on, and that Blackwood and I, poetically, are becoming
the best friends in the world. The other day, there was an Ode in Blackwood in honour of the memory
of Shelley; and I look for one to Keats. I hope this will give you faith in glimpses of the golden
age.
You may have seen a popular edition of
the “Indicator”
advertised; I mean with omissions. It is not mine, but Colburn’s, or I should have had copies to load my friends
with, whereas I have been obliged to be silent about it to some of my oldest and
nearest. What am I then to do in your house? I must, for the present (for I still
hope to do better), cut the gentlemen, and confine myself, with a pleasing
narrowness, to the lady—I beg pardon, to Mary, to whom I beg kindest remembrances, and her acceptance of the
book ![]()
| LEIGH HUNT AND HIS LETTERS. | 245 |
![]()
she christened. Dear
Vin, I think of you all, be assured,
quite as often as you think of me. What have I to do, sitting, as I do, evening
after evening by myself in my study, but to think of old times and friends, and
attempt the consolation of a verse? May you all be very happy is the constant wish
of
Your affectionate friend,
Geoffrey Chaucer (1340 c.-1400)
English Poet, the author of
The Canterbury Tales (1390 c.).
Charles Cowden Clarke (1787-1877)
The schoolmate and friend of John Keats; he lectured on Shakespeare and European
literature and published
Recollections of Writers (1878).
Mary Victoria Cowden Clarke [née Novello] (1809-1898)
The daughter of the musician Vincent Novello, she married Charles Cowden Clarke in 1828
and wrote works on Shakespeare, including
The Complete Concordance to
Shakespeare (1845).
Henry Colburn (1785-1855)
English publisher who began business about 1806; he co-founded the
New
Monthly Magazine in 1814 and was publisher of the
Literary
Gazette from 1817.
James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)
English poet, journalist, and man of letters; editor of
The
Examiner and
The Liberal; friend of Byron, Keats, and
Shelley.
John Keats (1795-1821)
English poet, author of
Endymion, "The Eve of St. Agnes," and
other poems, who died of tuberculosis in Rome.
Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695)
French poet whose
Fables were first translated into English in
1734.
Vincent Novello (1781-1861)
English music publisher and friend of Charles Lamb, Leigh Hunt, and Percy Bysshe
Shelley.
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
English poet, with Byron in Switzerland in 1816; author of
Queen
Mab (1813),
The Revolt of Islam (1817),
The Cenci and
Prometheus Unbound (1820), and
Adonais (1821).
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Dean of St Patrick's, Scriblerian satirist, and author of
Battle of the
Books with
Tale of a Tub (1704),
Drapier
Letters (1724),
Gulliver's Travels (1726), and
A Modest Proposal (1729).
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. (1817-1980). Begun as the
Edinburgh Monthly Magazine,
Blackwood's assumed the name of its proprietor, William Blackwood after the sixth
number. Blackwood was the nominal editor until 1834.
The True Sun. (1832-1837). A London daily newspaper edited by Laman Blanchard.
