Hazlitt found relief for his feelings by threatening _Blackwood's_ with a lawsuit. Yet in July, 1824, appeared an elaborate comparison of Hunt and Hazlitt in _Blackwood's_ choicest manner and in March, 1825, a review of the _Spirit of the Age_. After 1828 the defamatory articles ceased entirely. In 1867 appeared what might be construed into an attempt at reparation by Bulwer-Lytton. Hazlitt was still spoken of as the most aggressive of the Cockneys, discourteous and unscrupulous, a bitter politician who would substitute universal submission to Napoleon for established monarchial institutions; but he is credited with strong powers of reason, of judicial criticism and of metaphysical speculation, and with perception of sentiment, truth and beauty.
It is curious that, in the lives of three such geniuses as Shelley, Byron and Keats a man of lesser gifts and of weaker fibre should have played so large a part as did Leigh Hunt. It is more curious in view of the fact that the period of intimate association in each case extended over only a few years. The explanation must be sought in the accident of the age and in the personality of the man himself. It was an era of stirring action and of strong feeling. Men were clamoring for freedom from the trammels of the past and were pressing forward to the new day. Through the union of some of the qualities of the pioneer and of the prophet, Leigh Hunt was thrust into a position of prominence that he might not have gained at any other time, for he lacked the vital requisites of true leadership.
His personal quality was as rare as his opportunity. He had a personal ascendancy, a strange fascination born of the sympathy and chivalry, the sweetness and joyousness of his nature. An exotic warmth and glow worked its spell upon those about him. Barry Cornwall said that he was a "compact of all the spring winds that blew." His lovableness and very "genius for friendship" bound intimately to him those who were thus attracted. There was, besides, an elusiveness and an ethereality about him--as Carlyle expressed it--"a fine tricksy medium between the poet and the wit, half a sylph and half an Ariel ... a fairy fluctuating bark." The "vinous quality" of his mind, Hazlitt said, intoxicated those who came in contact with him.