The Selected Writings of Leigh Hunt (review)

"The position of Leigh Hunt in our literature might easily be exaggerated and still more easily underestimated," cryptically remarked Arthur Symons in 1888, as quoted in the General Introduction to this latest collection (xii), almost thirty years after Hunt's death. How many nowadays would be confident to take either side? Even among Victorians he is remembered mainly as the prototype of the parasitic, childish Harold Skimpole in Bleak House, allegedly a fit of pique on Dickens's part for what he felt was an insufficient expression of gratitude in Hunt's Autobiography that had just come out. (However, the two remained friends, and Dickens subsequently apologized for his lampoon.) Hunt certainly should not be ignored by members of RSVP, for his was the most extensive journalistic career of the nineteenth century, beginning with the papers headed "Mr. Town, Jr., Critic and Censor-general" for The Traveler in 1804, when he was twenty, and extending to "The Occasional" series for The Spectator in 1859, the year of his death. The Examiner, which he edited from 1808 to 1821, is most closely associated with him, but these volumes contain excerpts from some dozen magazines which he edited for various periods of time.

In their General Introduction, editors Kucich and Cox proclaim Hunt to be not merely the most prolific, but "unmistakably, one of the leading writers of his age" (xii). One reason for his insufficient recognition today, they believe, is that alone among his peers – De Quincy, Lamb, and Hazlitt – he has not been accorded a collected works. Earlier editors Lawrence and Caroline Houtchens compressed Hunt's vast output into three volumes (1949–1962) and moreover "compartmentalized" the theatrical, literary, and political writings which the present editors believe interpenetrate one another.

In style, Hunt harks back to the graceful, gentlemanly discourse of his much admired Addison, but he was at the epicenter of his times, which bridge the Romantic and mid-Victorian ages. His muckraking and social activism are well known, particularly his tirade against the Prince Regent for betrayal of the English people, for which he and his brother John were imprisoned for two years on a libel charge. Among his close friends was the labor agitator Richard Carlile. Hunt sympathized with the Luddite Rebellion and Catholic Emancipation. He was a tireless promoter of freedom of the press. He reported on the Battle of Waterloo (observing that the men who served under Wellington were not accorded sufficient recognition), the death of Napoleon (questioning the suffix The Great), and the Congress of Vienna. In the literary realm, he was among the first to recognize Keats, whose first published poem "O Solitude" appeared in The Examiner of May 5, 1816, as well as Shelley, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. He accompanied Lord Byron to Italy, where Hunt spent several years. With writers too he was occasionally iconoclastic, as when he suggested that the office of Poet Laureate be abolished on the ground that it encouraged mediocrity. More ephemeral, but certainly of value to theatre historians, was his lifelong relish for the stage.

In the judgment of editor Morrison, the essays from the late 1820s through the early 1830s, falling between the heyday of Romanticism and early Victorianism, have been unjustly neglected. Among causes espoused by Hunt during these years were the First Reform Bill, the extension of suffrage, and the perennial plight of Irish farmers. Morrison detects in these writing a reduction of political invective, the tone of conflict "replaced by consensus and rational debate" (3:xxii). In literature, Hunt remained at the cutting edge, among the first to appreciate Browning, Tennyson, and the early Dickens. He also heard Carlyle lecture on the History of Literature. Worth quoting are his last words on "the late King" George IV: "Upon the whole ... a prince of good nature, but no talents, showy rather than magnificent, more polished than refined ..." (The Chat of the Week, July 3, 1830).

Volume 4 is...