Leigh Hunt's Relations with Byron, Shelley and Keats (Paperback)

Excerpt: ...of friendship and the last climax of flattery, an earnest waiving of his rank, were too much for me in the person of Lord Byron." 397 On the renewal of the acquaintance in Italy, the very familiar attitude seen in the dedication of the Story of Rimini, which Hunt himself had decided was "foolish," was changed at the advice of Shelley to an extremely formal manner of address. Hunt says that Byron did not like the change. 398 As a matter of fact, six years of separation had brought about other more important changes: Byron had grown more selfish and avaricious, Hunt more helpless and vain. Three months were spent in Pisa after Shelley's death. In September the two families left for Genoa, travelling in separate parties and, on their arrival, settling in separate homes, the Hunts with Mrs. Shelley. From this time on there was little intercourse between Byron and Hunt. October 9, 1822, Byron wrote to England and denied that all three families were living under one roof. He said that he rarely saw Hunt, not more than once a month. 399 Hunt to the contrary said that they saw less of each other than in Genoa yet "considerable." 400 Although at no time was there an open breach, yet cordiality and sympathy were wholly lost on both sides in the strain of the financial situation. They failed of agreement even on impersonal matters. Byron had looked forward with great pleasure to Hunt's companionship. Before they met he had written: "When Leigh Hunt comes we shall have banter enough about those old ruffiani, the old dramatists, with their tiresome conceits, their jingling rhymes, and endless play upon Pg 110 words." 401 This pleasant anticipation was not realized, for Hunt's sensitiveness in petty matters and Byron's scorn of Hunt's affectation and of his ill-bred personal applications, 402 or so the hearer interpreted them, reduced safe topics to Boswell's Life of Johnson. Even a...