Unpublished Correspondence of William Hazlitt
THE peculiar rarity of letters, and even notes, in the handwriting of Hazlitt, the essayist and critic (1778-1830), seems to have arisen from his repugnance to put pen to paper in the absence of an absolute necessity. In the quarter of a century which has elapsed since the publication of the Memoirs by his grandson, barely twenty examples, including several of no special moment, have presented themselves in the market, and, with one or two exceptions, these are all in the hands of the editor of the present article, who has acquired them by purchase or gift. At the time when the Memoirs were in preparation, every effort was made to obtain additions to the early correspondence preserved in the Literary Remains, 1836, but with the most limited success; and there is very slight ground for the hope that the store will be appreciably or importantly augmented in the future. Many of the communications are merely brief business notes ; one is a long juvenile letter, of some interest as illustrating Hazlitt’s boyish nature; but those of most concern to the student of literature are such as relate to Hazlitt’s connection with Leigh Hunt and to his affair with Blackwood. Before presenting these, however, we introduce two which have reference to his literary work and friends in London in 1806. The first is addressed to Johnson, the publisher of the abridgment of Tucker, or Search, from Great Russell Street, to which John Hazlitt had removed in 1804 from Rathbone Place.
I.
DEAR SIR, — I have sent you the abridgement I have made of the two first volumes. The proportion in quantity is, as near as I can guess, about 210 pages to 790, that is, considerably less than a third. I imagine the 3 last volumes, though much larger, will not take more than the 2 first, and that the 3d & 4th will be about 400 pages, or perhaps more. If you should think this too much in quantity, the sooner you let me know the better. I find that going on in the way I have done, I can insert almost every thing that is worth remembering in the book. I give the amusing passages almost entire. In fact I have done little more than leave out repetitions, & other things that might as well never have been in the book. But whether I have done it properly, or no, you will be able to determine better than I. It the first manuscript should be awkward to print from being written both ways, I could easily have it transcribed.
I am with great respect
your obt servant
W. HAZLITT.
August 30th [1806]. 109 GREAT RUSSELL ST.
The second letter, which is of greater importance, was evidently written from his own lodgings in Southampton Buildings, a locality which he selected at this early date for the sake of its convenient position. He gives a remarkably full and gossiping account (for him) of his doings. He alludes to his painting, and we note how he was in touch with his brother’s circle, and even with others, such as Hume, of the Pipe Office, whom he knew through Lamb. The criticisms on Fox, Pitt, and others were for the Eloquence of the British Senate, then in preparation, but some of them had previously appeared in Free Thoughts on Public Affairs.
II.
MY DEAR FATHER, — I have just seen Tom Loftus, who told me to my surprize that he left you last Friday. He called last night but I was out. I was rather surprized because though I knew of his going into Wales, I did not think of his going your way. He seems much pleased with his reception & with his journey altogether. He has brought home some Welch mutton with him, which I am going to eat a part of tonight. He stopped a whole day at Oxford, which he thinks a finer place than Wem or even Shrewsbury. I have just finished the cheeks which I had dressed last Friday for my dinner after I had taken a walk round Hampstead & Highgate. I never made a better dinner in my life. T. Loftus came to help me off with them on Saturday, and we attacked them again at night, after going to the Opera, where I went for the first time & probably for the last. The fowls I took to Lamb’s the night I received them & the pickled pork. They were very good. But I found only one tongue in the basket, whereas you seem to speak of two.
The book I took to John’s yesterday. The preface to Search 1 is finished and printed to my great comfort. It is very long, & for what I know very tiresome. I am going on with my criticisms, & have very nearly clone Burke. I do not think I have done it so well as Chatham’s. I showed the one I did of him to Anth. Robinson 2 who I understand since was quite delighted with it, & thinks it a very fine piece of composition. I have only Fox’s to do of any consequence. Pitt’s I shall take out of my pamphlet which will be no trouble. I am to settle with Budd 3 tomorrow, but I doubt my profits will be small. These four viz. Burke, Chatham, Fox, Pitt, with Sir R. Walpole’s will be the chief articles of the work, & if I am not mistaken confounded good ones. I am only afraid they will be too good, that is, that they will contain more good things than are exactly proper for the occasion. Have you seen it in any of the papers? It was in the M. Chronicle. It is a pretty good one. I might if I was lazy take it, and save myself the trouble of writing one myself. I supped at Godwin’s on New Years day, & at Holcroft’s on Sunday.
I am going to dinner at Hume’s tomorrow where I also was on Christmas day, & had a pleasant time enough. It was much such a day as it was two years ago, when I was painting your picture. Tempos preterlabitur. I am afraid I shall never do such another. But all in good time: I have done what I wanted in writing & I hope I may in painting.
My mother I suppose was much pleased to see T. Loftus. He said that he Intended returning the same day having no time to spare, but that you pressed him so much to stop. Did not you think him a good deal like me ? He intends calling on John to say that he has seen you.
I can think of nothing more but my best love to my mother & Peggy, and that I am
Your affectionate son
W. HAZLITT.
Tuesday.
[Endorsed] Revd. Mr. Hazlitt,
Wem, Salop. Single.
Whatever Hazlitt might think or say about his abridgment of Tucker, Dr. Parr thought highly of the work, while Sir James Mackintosh extolled the preface. This, the essay, and the characters of Pitt and the rest in the Eloquence of the British Senate deservedly tended to bring the author into notice among the members of the press, as well as with an enlarged circle of literary admirers. His critical acumen was manifest, and he was at this time beginning to feel an interest in the theatre. The preface to the British Senate contains a reference to some of the old actors, with whom Holcroft and Lamb must have assisted in familiarizing him.
It has been already stated very fully in my Memoirs of my grandfather how the difference between Leigh Hunt and Hazlitt arose out of the strictures by the latter on Shelley, and the alleged attitude toward his political and literary friends. The feeling on the part of Hunt seems to have gradually intensified, and to have sought relief, like the pent-up resentment of Lamb against Southey, in a formal epistolary attainder, of which the ink was scarcely dry when, on the receipt of an elaborate defense of himself by the subject of his remarks, his anger melted away, — like Lamb’s again, — and led to the preparation and dispatch of a second letter, couched in a gentler strain.
The original letter to Hazlitt of 1821 constitutes perhaps the most remarkable feature in the Hunt correspondence. But it is only a recent discovery that Hunt wrote two letters, both of which are before us, and of which the final text — the only one seen by Hazlitt — was softened by some rumor that his friend projected a concession. The variations are mainly verbal, but we have no space to enter more at large on this part of the matter, for the composition occupies nearly six quarto pages.
The letter of Hazlitt to Hunt, which extends to five folio pages, and which has never seen the light since it reached his hands, seventy years ago, is undoubtedly by far the most vital and interesting of all the surviving correspondence of the writer. It is impossible to refrain from feeling sorry for the isolated position which such a man as Hazlitt held in every respect at this time, after having been recognized by his contemporaries as one of the foremost intellects of the age; but regarding the question judicially, we cannot shut our eyes to the natural umbrage arising from his policy of carrying his genius for portraiture, when he relinquished art as a profession, into another sphere, and painting his friends on paper instead of on canvas. There is something very apposite to this in the account of the Fight, where he says, “ It’s the devil for any one to tell me a secret, for it’s sure to come out in print. I do not care so much to gratify a friend, but the public ear is too great a temptation to me.”
It was a situation of complicated difficulty in which Hazlitt stood all his life. The trial to his sensitive and enthusiastic temper offered by the fruit of his political opinions, which closed against him the avenue to official patronage or power, reacted on his private relationships, and rendered a man who, under somewhat brighter auspices in a social and pecuniary respect, would have been habitually, what Lamb described him as being in happier moments, the most delightful of companions,—and, we may be allowed to add, the most liberal and just of men, — moody, misanthropic, and combative.
It necessarily militated against Hazlitt that he carried with him into the political and literary arena that stubborn and ineradicable persistence in proclaiming at all costs his view of truth and right which proved so fatal a bar to success and fortune in his father’s case; and assuredly, if we estimate the powerful agencies which were kept in motion during so many years to crush his spirit and his efforts, we must grant that, altogether, his intellectual force and prestige must have been great indeed to enable him to withstand even as long and as courageously as he did the malignant combination against him, and the scurrilous and cowardly attacks on his writings and character.
Here is the letter to Hunt: —
III.
Saturday night [April 21, 1821].
MY DEAR HUNT, — I have no quarrel with you, nor can I have. You are one of those people that I like, do what they will: there are others that I do not like, do what they may. I have always spoken well of you to friend or foe. viz. I have said you were one of the pleasantest & cleverest persons I ever knew ; but that you teazed any one you had to deal with out of their lives. I am fond of a theory, as you know ; but I will give up even that to a friend, if he shews that he has any regard to my personal feelings. You provoke me to think hard things of you, & then you wonder that I hitch them into an Essay, as if that made any difference. I pique myself on doing what I can for others ; but I cannot say that I have found any suitable returns for this, & hence perhaps my outrageousness of stomach ! For instance, I praised you in the Edinburgh Review, and when in a case of life & death I tried to lecture, you refused to go near the place, & gave this as a reason, saying it would seem a collusion, if you said any thing in my favour after what I had said of you. 2. I got Reynolds to write in the Edinburgh Review, at a time when I had a great reluctance to ask any favour of Jeffrey, & from that time I never set eyes on him for a year & a half after. 3. I wrote a book in defence of Godwin some years ago, one half of which he has since stolen without acknowledgment, without even mentioning my name, & yet he comes to me to review the very work & I write to Jeffrey to ask his consent, thinking myself, which you do not, the most magnanimous person in the world in the defence of a cause. 4. I have taken all opportunities of praising Lamb, & I never got a good word from him in return, big or little, till the other day. He seemed struck all of a heap, if I ever hinted at the possibility of his giving me a lift at any time. 5. It was but the other day that two friends did all they could to intercept an article about me from appearing in the said E. R. saying ‘ it would be too late,’‘ that the Editor had been sounded at a distance, & was averse,’with twenty other excuses, & at last I was obliged to send it myself, graciously & by main force, as it were, when it appeared just in time to save me from drowning. Co[u]lson had been backwards & forwards between my house & Bentham’s for between 3 & four years, & when the latter philosophically put an execution in my house, the plea was he had never heard of my name ;4 & when I theorized on this the other day as bad policy, & felo de se on the part of the Radicals, your nephew 5 & that set said : ‘ Oh, it was an understood thing—the execution, you know! ’ My God, it is enough to drive one mad. I have not a soul to stand by me, & yet I am to give up my only resource & revenge, a theory — I won’t do it, that’s flat. Montagu 6 is, I fancy, cut at my putting him among people with one idea, & yet when the Blackwoods (together with your) shirking out of that business put me nearly underground, he took every opportunity to discourage me, & one evening, when I talked of going there, I was given to un lerstand that there was ‘ a party expected.’ Yet after this I am not to look at him a little in abstracto. This is what has soured me, & made me sick of friendship & acquaintanceship. When did I speak ill of your brother John ? He never played me any tricks. I was in a cursed ill humour with you for two or three things when I wrote the article you find fault with (I grant not without reason). If I had complained to you, you would only have laughed ; you would have played me the very same tricks the very next time ; you would not have cared one farthing about annoying me ; & yet you complain that I draw a logical conclusion from all this, & publish it to the world without your name. As to Shelley, I do not hold myself responsible to him. You say I want imagination. If you mean invention or fancy, I say so too ; but if you mean a disposition to sympathise with the claims or merits of others, I deny it. I have been too much disposed to waive my own pretensions in deference to those of others. I am tired with playing at rackets all day, & you will be tired with this epistle. It has little to do with you ; for I see no use in raising up a parcel of small, old grievances. But I think the general ground of defence is good.
W. H.
I have given Hogg’s papers to Baldwin, and wish you would write a character of me for the next number. I want to know why everybody has such a dislike to me.
A somewhat new light is cast on the origin of the connection of Hazlitt with the London Magazine by an unpublished letter of January 20, 1820, from John Scott, its first editor, to the proprietors. It seems that Scott had met Hazlitt at the house of a common friend, and, the conversation probably turning upon literary matters and the new venture of Baldwin, Cradock & Co., Hazlitt placed in the hands of his acquaintance, by way of sample, something which he had by him. The specimen struck Scott as displaying talent, but as not suited, as it stood, to the columns of the magazine. Scott writes to his principals as follows on this subject: —
“ I am sorry to say that I cannot honestly tell you that Mr. Hazlitt’s MS. is likely to suit us in the Mag. It falls into all those errors which I know are his besetting ones, but which I hope to keep him clear of, when he is directed to particular topics, such as the Drama, &c. His talent is undoubted, — & his wish to serve us I believe at present very sincere. Since I last saw you, the friend at whose house I met Hazlitt on Sunday has called upon me to make a sort of semi-authorized communication from that Gentleman. The fact is, as you surmized, that Mr. H. is in want of a certain sum of money, & he says that, this sum in his power, he would be very free in every respect, & would devote the whole power of his mind to the preparation of the dramatic [articles] or any thing else we might suggest. If so, he would be a very valuable Contributor. What the sum is, I do not know, but I apprehend the terms he asked for the Volume (of which I am ignorant) reach the mark. If I could have told you that the Essays, of which a specimen has been forwarded, would surely suit us, the difficulty probably would be small: but altho very anxious to find it so, I would not. act fairly by you, were I to give this as my opinion. At the same time. I will engage for the gentleman, from what I know of his character, that he would be most ready to listen to suggestions, & to strain every nerve for us, in return for a service. He is naturally grateful, & though an original, is an honest one. I have not spoken to him for several years until Sunday last, but I see that in a very short time I shall be able to influence him to proper subjects & to a proper manner of handling them — I mean proper in regard to the Magazine, as, generally speaking, I should have little claim to be his judge or guide. — Would it therefore suit you to say to him, that wth regard to the Essays, of which one has been sent, you beg leave to think a little farther over the matter, & claim the privilege of suggesting what may occur to you, but that on the general score of Dramatic Articles, & such other Contributions as might hereafter be arranged between himself and you, on mutual agreement, you have no objection to treat, as for the volume, immediately. — I do not know what he has asked for the vol. Of course my recommendation must have a reference to the reasonableness of his demand, of which you will judge & decide as seems to you proper.
“ But I think him a desirable man to secure, & will be responsible for his fully meriting any service you may deem it right to render him.
“ He wished me to ask of you to write Elliston a note, enclosing the Magazine, & staling in dry official language that if it falls within the usual arrangements of his theatre to furnish the common ticket of admission to your Dramatic Correspondt., you would be glad to have it for his use. He says if he does not get this (as he has from Covt. Garden) he is afraid he will find 20 reasons (independent of expense) for keeping away from Drury Lane — for such, he says, is human nature. I think you may do this for him without conceding dignity.”
In a letter from John Keats to C. W. Dilke, September 21, 1818, the writer observes: " I suppose you will have heard that Hazlitt has on foot a prosecution against Blackwood. I dined with him a few days since at Hessey’s — there was not a word said about it, though I understand he is excessively vexed.” And in a note the editor of the Letters calls attention to the gross and indecent attacks on Hazlitt. As we learn from Smiles’s recent Life of John Murray, the action really proceeded, Patmore acting for the plaintiff; but it was finally compromised by the defendants, who agreed to pay all the expenses incurred on both sides. The affair, however, was the proximate cause of the secession of Murray from the London agency of the magazine, and its transfer to Cadell and Davies.
Blackwood, under the auspices of Wilson, Lockhart, and Croker, did not abandon the personalities which Murray had so wisely deprecated and censured. In a letter from Hazlitt to John Scott of April 12, 1820, there is a reference to the growing friction between Blackwood and the London Magazine, and we see that Hazlitt was not for making any concessions.
IV.
DEAR SIR, — I return the proof which I prefer to the philippic against Bentham. Do you keep the Past & Future ? You see Lamb argues the same view of the subject. That‘young master ’ will anticipate all my discoveries, if I don’t mind. The last No. was a very good one. The Living Authors was spirited & fine. Don’t hold out your hand to the Blackwoods yet, after having knocked those blackguards down. My address after you receive this will be Winterslow Hut, near Salisbury. Send me the article on Bast & Future, if you can spare it. Ask Baldwins, if they would like the articles on Modern Philosophy, 8 in number, at 5 guineas apiece. W. H.
We judge from a letter directed by them to Hazlitt on the 5th of March, 1821, that the proprietors of the London Magazine, after the death of Scott, entertained some idea of proposing to the former the vacant editorial chair. This communication, written only six days after the loss of their able and lamented friend, marks the rapid growth of Hazlitt s influence on the concern, and of his employers’ sense of the value of his services. Mr. Baldwin suggested that he should proceed with the series of Living Poets, and hoped to see him personally in a day or so respecting the choice of an editor. And that there was at one time a current idea that he might succeed Scott a note to him from John Landseer, soliciting information as to the insertion of something sent by him, seems pretty clearly to show. But Hazlitt did not, at all events, undertake the work, for which he was, indeed, indifferently qualified by his temper and habits, though so long as he remained on the staff his papers were gladly accepted ; and he is credited with having further enriched and strengthened the magazine by introducing Lamb.
Hazlitt has been charged with having been almost an accessory before the fact to the catastrophe of which poor Scott was the victim. He had been, in 1818, the central and prominent figure in the prosecution against Blackwood which led to the magazine losing Murray as its London agent; but the attacks on hum and his friends were not discontinued, and five years later there came to the new representative of the Tory organ in the metropolis a communication foreshadowing a renewal of hostilities.
V.
April 19, 1823.
SIR, — Unless you agree to give up the publication of Blackwood’s Magazine, I shall feel myself compelled to commence an action against you for damages sustained from repeated slanderous & false imputations in that work on me.
W. HAZLITT.
4 Chapel Street West,
Curzon Street.
[Endorsed] Mr. Thomas Cadell, Bookseller, Strand.
The complaint here made is general, and does not specifically refer to any article in the magazine as having been the immediate ground for the menace. Whether Cadell sent any reply to Hazlitt, or whether the Blackwoods took any cognizance of the representation, it is so far out of our power to state; but with the peremptory summons to Cadell there fell into our hands his letter to the Edinburgh firm, forwarding a copy of Hazlitt’s communication, and rather anxiously soliciting instructions. The cartel which had been sent to him could not be said to be either intemperate or redundant ; but the recipient, from what had occurred on a previous occasion, clearly apprehended the possibility of mischief, while at the same time he signified his dislike even to indirect implication in such charges. Here is what he wrote to his employers : —
STRAND, Saturday, 3 o’clock,
April 18, 1823.
DEAR SIR. — Annexed is a copy of a letter I have just received, the contents of which certainly make me feel somewhat uncomfortable. This is the first appeal to me accompanied with a threat, as publisher of your Magazine, and though Mr. H. may be considered deserving of censure upon most occasions, my feelings would not be of the most agreeable nature, were my name brought before the publick by him as disseminator of slanderous & false imputations. I shall therefore be glad if you will now suggest the mode best calculated to avert the impending storm, & I will take care to act accordingly.
Yours in haste
[Signed] T. CADELL.
Mr. W. Blackwood, Bookseller,
Edinburgh.
The curtain falls at this point. The terms of the incisive little note lead one to surmise that it was written after consultation with Montagu, Talfourd, or Procter. It breathes the air of a lawyer’s chambers.
The subjoined correspondence, relating to the ill-fated Life of Napoleon, from which we perceive that the author anticipated, as he certainly deserved, a very different issue, was addressed to Hunt and Clarke, the publishers of the work, while Hazlitt was exerting his utmost efforts to complete it at Winterslow. He was, as we know from a letter already printed in the Memoirs, in a very indifferent state of health, and had gone down into the country to combine the effects of change of air and of freedom from interruption. His distance from books explains his request to Henry Hunt, in the first communication, to verify certain points; the second letter is to Cowden Clarke. It might almost be augured from the latter, if not from both, that there was no adequate precaution taken to secure the coöperation of the press.
It is highly curious that in writing to Clarke, in 1828, he reverts to the subject matter of his notable letter, in 1821, to Leigh Hunt, and reproduces what we find there as to Hunt’s refusal to attend or notice his lectures almost totidem verbis.
VI.
DEAR SIR, — I am obliged by the £2 & am glad the account is no more against me. The Appendix, Nos 4 & 5, must be given at the end of vol. 4 (to be said so in a note). No. 6, Character of Marat by Brissot, will be found infallibly at the end of one of Miss Williams’s volumes from France, year 1794, which can be had at any library, Saunders & Ottley’s certainly. Also, I sent it up to Clarke some time ago. Tell him, I received the letter, & am much gratified by it, vanity apart. I am not surprised at what you tell me ; but drowning men catch at Buckinghams. Still so far, so good. What follows is important, not a drowning, but a shooting matter. You must give me one cancel at p. 209, vol. ii. & alter the word Buccaneer to cruiser. An Erratum won’t do. Second, do learn the width of the valley of the Nile from some authentic person (forSan Travels in Mesopotamia), and if it be more than five leagues (which I suspect it must be), cancel & change to fifteen, fifty, or whatever be the actual number. It is five in Napoleon’s Memoirs followed by Thibaudeau in vitâ. Is the Preface to go? You ’ll see I can bear it out, and perhaps play the devil with some people. Don’t you think an account in the Examiner would tell in just now, after the London Review & Athenæum, & give us a kind of pre-possession of the ground ? Tell St. John I wrote to thank him last week ; but I find I directed the letter wrong to 150 instead of 159. Have the kindness (if you have room) to insert the inclosed paragraph. I see your leader of Sunday confirms my theory of good-natured statesmen.
Yours ever very truly,
W. H.
P. S. I won’t send Clarke any more of my Georgies. — Buckingham had an article the day before, which I dare say he has yet, unless he has given it to Colburn to keep. Pray send me down the second vol. corrected in a day or two. I won’t send any more to B. unless he remits, which he does not seem inclined to do. I think this book will put your uncle’s head above water, & I hope he will keep it there — to vex the rogues. I wish he had not spoken so of Hook, but Colburn has a way with him !
Jany 16, 1828.
In spite of Hazlitt’s determination to write no more to Cowden Clarke on this point, we find that his irresistible persuasion that nothing adequate was being done to bring the forthcoming work, on which he had lavished so vast an amount of thought and manual labor, before the world in such a manner as to make it answer the purpose of all concerned forced his hand a fortnight later, and elicited the annexed categorical appeal to Hunt’s partner.
VII.
[February 1, 1828.]
DEAR CLARKE, — ‘ To you Duke Humphrey must unfold his grief ’ in the following queries.
1. Is it unworthy of our dignity & injurious to our interest to have the Life noticed favourably in a journal that is not the pink of classical elegance ?
2. Are we to do nothing to secure (beforehand) a favourable hearing to it, lest we should be suspected or charged with being accomplices in the success of our own work by the Charing-Cross Gang who would ruin you and me out of their sheer dogmatism & indignity ?
3. Must we wait for Mr. Southern to give his opinion, before we dare come before the public even in an extract ? Or be first hung up by our enemies, in order to be cast down by our zealous Whig & Reform friends ?
4. When the house is beset by robbers, are we to leave the doors open, to shew our innocence & immaculateness of intention ?
5. Were you not pleased to see the extracts from Hunt’s book in the Athenæum ? And do you not think they were of service? Why then judge differently of mine ?
6. There is a puff of Haydon in the Examiner, like blue ruin, out of pure generosity. But with respect to ourselves we shut our mouths up like a maidenhood, lest it should look like partiality. So Hunt said he could not notice my lectures, or give me a good word, because I had praised him in the Edinburgh, & it would be thought a collusion.
7. You sent me L. H.’s letter in the Chronicle, which I was glad to see, particularly that part relating to a literary cut-throat; but why, my dear Clarke, did you not send me the puff of myself in the London Review, which I was perhaps — perhaps not — more pleased to see ?
If you continue to use me so ill, I shall complain to your sister. Think of that. Master Brook. I like the Companion7 very well. Do not suppose I am vexed ; I am only frightened.
Yours ever very truly,
W. H.
It is evident that Hazlitt felt a good deal of solicitude about the success of the Life. Much depended on it, and coming in the wake of the one by Scott, which, whatever its relative merit may appear to us at the present moment to be, enjoyed the double advantage of his prestige and of chronological precedence, every exertion seemed desirable to secure a favorable reception by the public.
In a further appeal to Clarke, which has survived in a mere fragment, the author asks, “ Do you think it would be amiss to give Buckingham the first vol. for next week’s Athenæum, though Hunt, &c. do not write in it ? The public are to be won like a widow, —
Not slow approaches, like a virgin.’ ”
The failure of the publishers of the Life involved that of their undertaking, and the disappointment and worry accelerated and embittered the death of Hazlitt in the autumn of 1830.
William Carew Hazlitt.
- The Light of Nature Pursued, by Abraham Tucker, was published under the nom de plume of Edward Search.↩
- The brother of H. Crabb Robinson.↩
- The publisher.↩
- Could Bentham have been ignorant ? I have heard that he would make his visitors do obeisance to the tablet in honor of Milton, let by my grandfather into the garden wall of the house, —the earliest example of a practice now become common in London.↩
- Mr. Henry Leigh Hunt, of the firm of Hunt and Clarke.↩
- Mr. Basil Montagu.↩
- Leigh Hunt’s work, so called.↩