Shelley's Debt to Leigh Hunt and the Examiner

Abstract

Of Leigh Hunt's service to Shelley no adequate study has been made. We naturally look for it in Dowden's Life of Shelley (1886) or in Dr. Miller's Leigh Hunt's Relations with Byron, Shelley and Keats (N. Y., 1910). Unfortunately, both of these works contain serious misstatements regarding the Examiner, and Dowden's Life, also, is apparently responsible for the mistaken notion that John Wilson deserves the chief place among Shelley's contemporaries for publicly recognizing his genius. Yet a review of the criticism which appeared during Shelley's lifetime shows that Wilson's appreciation (and that of most other critics, for that matter) was confined to vague and unimportant assertions of Shelley's “genius,” offset by disapprobation of his views on almost every subject he wrote about. Early extravagant views expressed by the poet, although modified later, were not forgotten by adherents of the Establishment and the Crown. His published opinions and the rumors regarding his conduct interfered with general approval of his work as a poet. Leigh Hunt soon saw that the attacks on Shelley were induced chiefly by his misunderstood philosophy and the scandalous stories circulated about his conduct, and accordingly set about explaining his theories and defending his life. But in this effort to defend and interpret Shelley, Hunt in his generation stood practically alone, at least as far as the organs of criticism were concerned.1