"But there are left delights as high as these, And I shall ever bless my destiny, That in a time, when under pleasant trees Pan is no longer sought, I feel a free A leafy luxury, seeing I could please With these poor offerings, a man like thee."[105]
Hunt replied in the sonnet _To John Keats_, quoted here in full because of its inacessibility:
"'Tis well you think me truly one of those, Whose sense discerns the loveliness of things; For surely as I feel the bird that sings Behind the leaves, or dawn as it up grows, Or the rich bee rejoicing as he goes, Or the glad issue of emerging springs, Or overhead the glide of a dove's wings, Or turf, or trees, or midst of all, repose. And surely as I feel things lovelier still, The human look, and the harmonious form Containing woman, and the smile in ill, And such a heart as Charles's wise and warm,-- As surely as all this, I see ev'n now, Young Keats, a flowering laurel on your brow."[106]
In 1820, Hunt dedicated his translation of Tasso's _Aminta_ to Keats.
In spite of a eulogistic article by Hunt running in _The Examiners_ of June 1, July 6 and 13, 1817, and other notices in some of the provincial papers, the _Poems_ sold not very well at first, and later, not at all.[107] Praise from the editor of _The Examiner_, although offered with the kindest intentions in the world, was about the worst thing that could possibly have happened to Keats, for, politically and poetically, Leigh Hunt was most unpopular at this time;[108] and it was noised abroad that Keats too was a radical in politics and in religion, a disciple of the apostate in his attack on the established and accepted creed of poetry. As a matter of fact, Keats's interest in politics decreased as his knowledge of poetry increased, although, "as a party-badge and sign of ultra-liberalism," he, like Hunt, Byron and Shelley continued to wear the soft turn-down collars in contrast to the stiff collars and enormous cravats of the time.[109] In religion Keats vented his dislike of sect and creed on the Kirk of Scotland, as Hunt had on the Methodists. His "simply-sensuous Beauty-worship" Palgrave attributes to the "moral laxity" of Hunt.[110] Unless Palgrave, like Haydon, refers to Hunt's unorthodoxy in matters of church and state, it is difficult to understand on what evidence he bases this statement; in the first place, a charge of moral laxity is not borne out by the recorded facts of Hunt's life, but only by such untrustworthy tradition as still lingers in the public mind from the Cockney School articles of _Blackwood's_ and the _Quarterly_. Carlyle said that he was of "most exemplary private deportment."[111] Byron, Shelley and Lamb testified to his virtuous life. In the second place, a close comparison of the works of the two now leads one to conclude that "simply-sensuous Beauty-worship" existed to a much higher degree in Keats than in Hunt, and that so strong an innate tendency would have developed without outward stimulus from any one. While both men sought the good and worshipped the beautiful, Keats, unlike Hunt, recognized somewhat "the burthen and the mystery" of human life.