 |
 |
 |
Poetry and Politics in the Cockney Schoolby Jeffrey N. Cox | |
|
|
 |
In other words, Blackwood?s and the other conservative reviewing journals of the day sought to define what we call the second generation of romantics as the Cockney School headed by Leigh Hunt. The centrality of Hunt will perhaps surprise the modern reader, but so will the contemporary insistence that these writers ? whom we see as offering different visions and verse ? were part of a single school. Still, I do not believe we can dismiss these attacks by simply referring to the wildly partisan nature of reviewing during the period. Jerome McGann and Marjorie Levinson have shown us how appropriate, in fact, many features of the Cockney label are in the case of Keats?s poetry.[9] One
function of this book is to argue that there was a Cockney School: a group (in the sense I have outlined in my introduction) of writers, artists, and intellectuals organized loosely around Leigh Hunt and his various journals ? primarily the Examiner, but also the Indicator and the Liberal ? that conceived of itself as a coherent circle, something in between the kind of manuscript coterie circle that had once dominated literary production and the kind of self-consciously avant-garde movement that would mark much later literary and artistic effort. This was a circle that, at different times, included an even larger group than that identified by the reviews: Hunt himself and his family, including his brothers John and Robert and his sister-in-law Elizabeth Kent, Keats, Percy and Mary Shelley, Byron, Benjamin Robert Haydon, John Hamilton Reynolds, Charles Armitage Brown, the Ollier brothers, Horace and James Smith, Charles Cowden Clarke and his future wife Mary Novello, Procter, Vincent Novello and his wife, Thomas Alsager, Thomas Barnes, Thomas Love Peacock, Hazlitt, Edward Holmes, Godwin, Thomas Richards, the Gattie brothers, Charles Wells, Charles Dilke, P. G. Patmore, John Scott, Walter Coulson, Lamb, Barron Field, Joseph Severn, perhaps Douglas Jerrold and Thomas Noon Talfourd, and Cornelius Webb, as well as many family members and more ephemeral participants. With Hunt as their chief organizer, they formed an intelligentsia, with the Examiner as their organ, with reform, anticlericalism, and joyful paganism as their platform, and with shared enthusiasms such as Mozart, vegetarianism, and myth. The question was not of the existence of this group but of its definition. The most influential attempt to label them ? both then and now ? was the Cockney School campaign, with deleterious effects on the reception of these poets ? both then and now.
|
|
| |
?Tis not your work they criticize, but you.London Magazine, May 1820 What though, for showing truth to flatter?d state, | |
 |
The Cockney School attacks launched by Blackwood?s in 1817 constituted an enormously powerful act of cultural definition that still influences our understanding of what we call the second generation of romantic writers ? Hunt?s fame is still impaired by that ?? wretched crew,?? and scholars continue to work hard to separate other poets, Keats in particular, from the maligned Hunt. One sign of the power of these attacks is that they displaced another attempt to represent the collective efforts of writers such as Keats, Shelley, Hunt, John Hamilton Reynolds, Hazlitt, and Horace Smith. For it was Hunt himself who first announced the presence of a new school ? in his 1816 Examiner review of the ?? young poets?? Keats, Shelley, and Reynolds, in his longer review of Keats?s Poems of 1817, and in his many occasional poems celebrating the group, often published in the Examiner and gathered together in his volume Foliage of 1818. The group had already made a collective appearance: The Round Table: A Collection of Essays on Literature, Men, and Manners (1817), while usually considered only in studies of Hazlitt, who wrote most of the pieces, was in fact originally conceived as a textual embodiment of the group, a meeting on the pages of the Examiner between Hazlitt, Hunt (who introduced the series and wrote twelve of the fifty-two pieces before Napoleon?s return forced him to turn wholly to political writing), Lamb, Barnes, and another unknown collaborator.
|
 |
The Blackwood?s attacks were literally reactionary, a conservative response to a preexisting positive presentation of the group; each feature of the attack ? its abuse of Hunt and his friends on social, sexual, stylistic, and ideological grounds ? re-presents as a failing a key aspect of the circle?s poetic project. It is emblematic that the Cockney School reviews opened by quoting Webb?s lines praising the group, for even if Z. wished to ridicule these verses, the quotation recognizes the priority of the positive image that must be undermined. These attacks were in fact a counterattack, an act of recognition by ideological enemies of the gathering of writers around Leigh Hunt.[10] For example, a correspon-dent
? perhaps John Wilson, shortly to be attached to Blackwood?s ? writing to the conservative Anti-Gallican Monitor (8 June 1817) admits that Hunt?s ?? Young Poets?? piece in the Examiner is the impetus behind his ridicule of the ?? school of poetry, that is adduced in the article . . . There are sundry Genii yclep?d ? Leigh Hunt, John Keats, John Reynolds, Percy Shelley, and I believe I may add a few &c.?s &c.?s &c.?s at the head of this desperate gang ? Mr. Hunt, the high Priest of Oppollo [sic] nemcon, in the Chair.??[11] The piece goes on to recognize Hunt?s power, to
complain about the coterie nature of the group, and to ridicule Keats in particular. Blackwood?s, too, feels the need to denigrate this group not because it can easily be dismissed (as Lockhart sometimes pretends), but because conservatives were concerned about its cultural authority. The more one reads Blackwood?s, the clearer it becomes how obsessed the journal was with Hunt and his friends.
|
 |
The Cockney School articles come, then, rather late in the day, after poets such as Keats had rallied to Hunt?s side and after Hunt had sought to create a positive identity for the circle.[12] Writing in the Examiner for 1 December 1816, Hunt recognized ?? a new school of poetry rising of late,
which promises to extinguish the French one that has prevailed among us since the time of Charles the 2d??; this school ? as Hunt already identifies features central to twentieth-century criticism of the poetry of the period ? is marked by an ?? aspiration after real nature and original fancy?? (p. 762). Citing evidence that the new school is on the rise, Hunt refers to the Edinburgh Review?s admission that the ?? old school?? was exhausted and to Byron?s turn in Childe Harold III to nature, the ?? Noble Poet?? having ?? renounced a certain leaven of the French style.?? As his later review (Examiner, 1 June, 6 July, 13 July 1817) of Keats?s 1817 volume makes clear, Hunt credits the ?? Lake School?? and Wordsworth in particular with having inaugurated a new age in poetry, but ?? like most Revolutionists, especially of the cast which they have since turned out to be, they went to an extreme, calculated rather at first to make the readers of poetry disgusted with originality and adhere with contempt and resentment to their magazine common-places?? (p. 345). Hunt is interested in arguing that what we call the second generation of romantic poets form a school that has learned from the Lake Poets but is ready to go beyond them. While allying Byron to these efforts, he in particular wishes to announce three young poets, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Hamilton Reynolds, and John Keats, ?? who appear to us to promise a considerable addition of strength to the new school?? (1 December 1816, p. 762).
|
 |
As Hunt points out in his review of Poems, Keats makes a similar argument in his ?? Sleep and Poetry,?? which as we will see in chapter 3 is a kind of poetic manifesto for this new school; in that poem, Keats, like Hunt, castigates the French school,[13] and, while preferring the Lake
School, he finds its poets absorbed by the cultural despondency of the day, ?? the morbidity that taints the productions of the Lake Poets,?? to use Hunt?s phrase (Examiner, 13 July 1817,p.443). Reynolds, usually separated from Hunt in discussions of Keats and his friends, voices a similar position in his review of Poems, where he argues that Keats will ?? make a great addition to those who would overthrow that artificial taste which French criticism has long planted amongst us?? (Champion, 9 March 1817,p.78).
|
 |
It was, of course, not just the criticism written by the group but their poetry itself that announced their allegiance to one another. Poems ? with its dedication to Hunt, with its poems to Charles Cowden Clarke, Haydon, and Hunt, and with its sonnets written for Hunt?s poetry-writing contests or in response to other moments within the group such as the reading of Chapman?s Homer with Clarke ? seeks to represent in verse the group and its life. The same can be said of Hunt?s later volume, Foliage (1818), which offers poems to Keats, Shelley, Hazlitt, Lamb, Vincent Novello, Horace Smith, Haydon, John Hamilton Reynolds, and others associated with the Hunt circle, including Byron; Hunt includes poems celebrating the music made with Novello (?? To Henry Robertson, John Gattie, and Vincent Novello??), the poetry created with Keats (?? On Receiving a Crown of Ivy??), and Haydon?s paintings (?? To Benjamin Robert Haydon??). One can adduce many more examples of moments when these writers announce in print their connections within this circle: we might think of Shelley?s dedication of The Cenci to Hunt or Hunt?s dedication of his translation of Tasso?s Amyntas to Keats; of John Hamilton Reynolds?s sonnet praising Hunt?s Story of Rimini (Champion, 8 December 1816,p.390) or Hunt?s answering sonnet published in Foliage;
of Hunt?s reviews in the Examiner and Indicator of Shelley and Keats or Keats?s Examiner review of Reynolds?s Peter Bell; of Horace Smith?s acknowledgment of Hunt?s influence on his Amarynthus, the Nympholept or his turn to Shelley in responding to ?? Ozymandias?? in the sonnet ?? On a Stupendous Leg of Granite??; and of Shelley?s Adonais with its praise of Keats and portraits of Byron and Hunt or ?? Arthur Brooke?? ?s Elegy on the Death of Percy Bysshe Shelley with its dedication to Leigh Hunt. Anyone familiar with the poetry of the day would have been aware of the complex interconnections of this group around Hunt. Anyone, like the Blackwood?s crew, who opposed the politics of Hunt would be concerned about the potentially powerful presence of this ?? coterie?? on the literary scene.
|