"Of all the ineffable Centaurs that were ever begotten by self-love upon a Nightmare, I think 'this monstrous Sagittary' the most prodigious. _He_ (Leigh H.) is an honest charlatan, who has persuaded himself into a belief of his own impostures, and talks Punch in pure simplicity of heart, taking himself (as poor Fitzgerald said of _him_self in the _Morning Post_) for Vates in both senses and nonsenses of the word. Did you [Moore] look at the translations of his own which he prefers to Pope and Cowper, and says so?--Did you read his skimble-skamble about Wordsworth being at the head of his own _profession_, in the _eyes_ of _those_ who followed it? I thought that poetry was an _art_, or an _attribute_, and not a _profession_; but be it one, is that ... at the head of _your_ profession in your eyes?"[90]
Other poems belonging to this period are _Hero and Leander_ and _Bacchus and Ariadne_ in 1819, and a translation of Tasso's _Aminta_ in 1820. The first two show Hunt's faculty for poetical narrative and description, and, in common with Keats, a partiality for classical subjects. The three are in no way radically different from the poems already considered.
The _Literary Pocket Book_ which Hunt edited in 1820, 1821 and 1822, the _New Monthly Magazine_ to which he began contributing in 1821, and the _Literary Examiner_, which he established in 1823, complete the enumeration of his writings during the period of his association with Byron, Shelley and Keats. Beyond the contributions of Shelley and Keats to the first and the reviews of Byron's poems in the third, they are unimportant here.
Keats's meeting with Hunt--Growth of their friendship--Haydon's intervention--Keats's residence with Hunt--His departure for Italy--Hunt's Criticism of Keats's poetry--His influence on the _Poems of 1817_.
It was about the year 1815 that Keats showed to his former school friend, Charles Cowden Clarke, the following sonnet, the first indication the latter had that Keats had written poetry:
"What though, for showing truth to flatter'd state, Kind Hunt was shut in prison, yet has he, In his immortal spirit been as free As the sky-searching lark, and as elate. Minion of grandeur! think you he did wait? Think you he nought but prison walls did see, Till, so unwilling thou unturn'dst the key? Ah, no! far happier, nobler was his fate! In Spenser's halls he stray'd, and bowers fair, Culling enchanted flowers; and he flew With daring Milton through the fields of air: To regions of his own his genius true Took happy flights. Who shall his fame impair When thou art dead, and all thy wretched crew?"