imagination active, but overrating its own share in the business; an impulsive will, checked by an over-scrupulous, over-conscientious habit of "refining;" a nice taste, and an overwhelming sympathy with every form and aspect of human enjoyment, suffering, or aspiration. His public conduct, his devotion to "truth," whether in politics or art, won him admiration and illustrious friendships. In a society of many severed circles he formed one centre, around which were gathered Lamb, Ollier, Barnes, Mitchell, Shelley, Keats, Byron, Hazlitt, Blanchard, Forster, Carlyle, and many more, departed or still living; some of them centres of circles in which Leigh Hunt was a wanderer, but all of them, in one degree or other, attesting their substantial value for his character. They influenced him, he influenced them, and through them the literature and politics of the century, more largely, perhaps, than any one of them alone. Let us see, then, what it was that he did.
Even in the News of 1805, when he was barely of age, and when he wrote with the dashing confidence of a youth wielding the combined ideas of Sam Johnson and Voltaire, the "damned boy," as Kemble called him, established a repute for cultivation, consistency, taste, and independence; and he originated a style of contemporary criticism unknown to the newspaper press. In other words, he brought the standards of criticism which had before been confined to the lecture of academies or the library, into the daily literature which aids in shaping men's judgments as they rise.
We have seen how, under a name borrowed from the Tory party, the Examiner was established, with little premeditation, a literary ambition, and the hope of realizing a modest wage for the work done. It found literature, poetry especially, sunk to the feeblest, tamest, and most artificial of graces,—the reaction upon the long-felt influence left by the debauchery of the Stuarts and the vulgarer coarseness of the early Georges. It found English monarchs and statesmen again forgetting the great lessons of the British constitution, with the press slavishly acquiescing. In 1808, an Irish Major had a "case" against the Horse Guards, of most corrupt and illicit favouritism: the Examiner published the case, and sustained it. In 1809, a change of ministry was announced: the Examiner hailed "the crowd of blessings that might be involved in such a change; " adding, "Of all monarchs, indeed, since the Revolution, the successor of George the Third will have the finest opportunity of becoming nobly popular." In 1812, on St. Patrick's day, a loyal band of guests significantly abstained from paying the usual courtesy to the toast of the Prince Regent, and coughed down Mr. Sheridan, who tried to speak up for his royal and forgetful friend. A writer in a morning paper supplied the omitted homage in a poem more ludicrous for its wretched verse than for the fulsome strain in which it called the Prince the "Protector of the Arts," the "Mæcenas of the Age," the "Glory of the People," a "Great Prince," attended by Pleasure, Honour, Virtue, Truth, and other illustrious vassals. The Examiner showed up this folly by simply turning it into English, and in plain language describing the position and popular estimate of the Prince.
