the maudlin hobs-and-nobs, and the disquisitions on smothered rabbits, and the bloated hectics, and the blinking eyes and slurred voices, and the hiccups, the rantings, and the roars, hear an unwieldy Loan-jobber descanting on our Glorious King and Unshaken Constitution. The stranger, that after this sight, goes to see the beasts in the Tower, is an enemy to all true climax.”[34]

In actual results The Examiner accomplished a great deal in the counter movement for reform. While Hunt had no original or constructive political theory, little power of philosophical or logical thought, and no special equipment besides wide general knowledge, he had great sincerity and courage and a defiant attitude toward corruption of all kinds.[35] He was himself absolutely incorruptible. If he preferred any form of government above another—for he was more interested in the pure administration of an established government than in the form itself—his preference was for a liberal monarchy. Notwithstanding this moderate attitude, The Examiner was accused of radical, even revolutionary opinions. It was charged with being an enemy of the constitution, a traitor to the king, a foe to the established church.[36] Hunt’s positive achievement in political journalism was two-fold: he obtained additional freedom for the press and he elevated journalistic style to a literary level. Monkhouse says that Hunt “established for the first time a paper which fought, and fought effectively, with prejudice and privilege, with superstition and tyranny, which was a bearer of light to all men of Liberal principles in that country, and set the example of the independent thought and fearless expression of opinion, which has since become the very light and power of the press.”[37] Of the Hunt brothers Coventry Patmore writes: “I verily believe that, without the manly firmness, the immaculate political honesty, and the vigorous good sense of the one, and the exquisite genius and varied accomplishments, guided by the all-pervading and all-embracing humanity of the other, we should at this moment have been without many of those writers and thinkers on whose unceasing efforts the slow but sure march of our political, and with it, our social regeneration as a people mainly depends.”[38]

Hunt assisted in bringing about reforms in the interest of the people by calling attention to abuses that demanded investigation, and by advocating correction. His ideas on national finance and practical administration are wonderful when contrasted with his inefficiency in his own affairs. He lacked largeness of perspective and masculine grasp. His work is all the more remarkable when his temperament and tastes are considered; for his was a nature, as Professor Dowden has put it, “framed less for the rough and tumble of English radical politics than for ‘dance and Provençal Song and sunburnt mirth.’” As a factor in the reform movement begun in the first decade of the nineteenth century Leigh Hunt has not yet come into his own.[39] His was no cosmic theory, nor search after the origin of evil, nor magnificent rebellion like Shelley’s and Byron’s; but in his own smaller way he played as courageous and as effective a part in the cause of liberty as those greater spirits.[40]

In 1810, the two brothers had established a quarterly, The Reflector, of much the same nature and creed as The Examiner. It was unsuccessful and was discontinued after the fourth number. It differed from its predecessor in combining literature with politics. Hunt’s reason for this innovation displays a rare power to judge of contemporary movements: “Politics, in times like these, should naturally take the lead in periodical discussion, because they have an importance almost unexampled in history, and because they are now, in their turn, exhibiting their reaction upon literature, as literature in the preceding age exhibited its action upon them.”[41]

Although Hunt continued to be editor of The Examiner until he went to Italy in 1822, his aggressive political activity seemed to die out of him after his release from prison. He was never so prominently again before the public; in 1828, he ceased altogether to write on political questions. He retired more and more into the seclusion of his books, and from about 1849, denied himself to all but a small circle of congenial spirits.

Hunt, like the others of his group, was deeply influenced by the liberal movement in religion as well as in politics. He had seen his father’s progress from the Anglican Church through the Unitarian[42] to the Universalist. At the age of twelve he repudiated the doctrine of eternal punishment and declared himself a believer in the “exclusive goodness of futurity.” In his early manhood he decried the superstition of Catholicism, the intolerance of Calvinism, and the emotionality of Methodism. Yet he acknowledged a Great First Cause and a Divine Paternity. He refused, like Shelley, to recognize the existence of evil, and thought everything finally good and beautiful in nature.[43] He believed that universal happiness would come about through individual excellence, through performance of duty and avoidance of excess. Those who disagreed with him in this respect he considered blasphemers of nature. As Lord Houghton in his address in the cemetery of Kensal Green on the unveiling of a bust of Hunt remarked, he had an “absolute superstition for good.” Similar testimony was borne by R. H. Horne when he said that Chaucer’s “‘Ah, benedicite’ was falling forever from his lips.”[44] His religion was one of charity and cheerfulness, of love and truth, which is but to affirm that the humanitarian moral of Abou Ben Adhem was realized in his own life.[45] On the death of Shelley’s child William, Hunt wrote to the bereaved father: “I do