AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF LEIGH HUNT.

CHAPTER IX.

THE EXAMINER.

Establishment of the Examiner. - Albany Fonblanque.— Author's mistakes in setting out in his editorial career.— - Objects of the Examiner, and misrepresentations of them by the Tories.-Jeud'esprit of "Napoleon in his Cabinet."-" Breakfast Sympathies with the Miseries of War."—War dispassionately considered.— Anti-Republicanism of the Examiner, and its views in theology. -The Author for some time a clerk in the War Office.- His patron, Mr. Addington, afterwards Lord Sidmouth.-Poetry and Accounts.

At the beginning of the year 1808, my brother John and myself set up the weekly paper of the Examiner in joint partnership. It was named after the Examiner of Swift and his brother Tories. I did not think of their politics. I thought only of their wit and fine writing, which, in my youthful confidence, I proposed to myself to emulate; and I could find no previous political journal equally qualified to be

VOL. II.

B

its godfather. Even Addison had called his opposition paper the Whig Examiner.

Some dozen years afterwards I had an editorial successor, Mr. Fonblanque, who had all the wit for which I toiled, without making any pretensions to it. He was, indeed, the genuine successor, not of me, but of the Swifts and Addisons themselves; profuse of wit even beyond them, and superior in political knowledge. Yet, if I laboured hard for what was so easy to Mr. Fonblanque, I will not pretend to think that I did not sometimes find it; and the study of Addison and Steele, of Goldsmith and Voltaire, enabled me, when I was pleased with my subject, to give it the appearance of ease. At other times, especially on serious occasions, I too often got into a declamatory vein, full of what I thought fine turns and Johnsonian antithesis. The new office of editor conspired with my success as a critic to turn my head. I wrote, though anonymously, in the first person, as if, in addition to my theatrical pretensions, I had suddenly become an oracle in politics; the words philosophy, poetry, criticism, statesmanship, nay, even ethics and theology, all took a final tone in my lips; and when I consider the virtue as well as knowledge which I demanded from everybody whom I had occasion to speak of, and of how much charity my own juvenile errors ought to have considered themselves in need

EGOTISM AND ITS REGRETS.

3

(however they might have been warranted by conventional allowance), I will not say I was a hypocrite in the odious sense of the word, for it was all done out of a spirit of foppery and "fine writing," and I never affected any formal virtues in private ; but when I consider all the nonsense and extravagance of those assumptions—all the harm they must have done me in discerning eyes, and all the reasonable amount of resentment which it was preparing for me with adversaries, I blush to think what a simpleton I was, and how much of the consequences I deserved. It is out of no "ostentation of candour" that I make this confession. It is extremely painful

to me.

Suffering gradually worked me out of a good deal of this kind of egotism. I hope that even the present most involuntarily egotistical book affords evidence that I am pretty well rid of it; and I must add, in my behalf, that, in every other respect, never, at that time or at any after time, was I otherwise than an honest man. I overrated my claims to public attention; I greatly overdid the manner of addressing it; and I was not too abundant in either; but I set out perhaps with as good an editorial amount of qualification as most writers no older. I was fairly grounded in English history; I had carefully read De Lolme and Blackstone; I had no mercenary.

views whatsoever, though I was a proprietor of the

B 2

journal; and all the levity of my animal spirits, and the foppery of the graver part of my pretensions, had not destroyed in me that spirit of martyrdom which had been inculcated in me from the cradle. I denied myself political as well as theatrical acquaintances; I was the reverse of a speculator upon patronage or employment; and I was prepared, with my excellent brother, to suffer manfully, should the time for suffering arrive.

The spirit of the criticism on the theatres continued the same as it had been in the News. In politics, from old family associations, I soon got interested as a man, though I never could love them as a writer. It was against the grain that I was encouraged to begin them; and against the grain I ever afterwards sat down to write, except when the subject was of a very general description, and I could introduce philosophy and the belles lettres.

The main objects of the Examiner newspaper were to assist in producing Reform in Parliament, liberality of opinion in general (especially freedom from superstition), and a fusion of literary taste into all subjects whatsoever. It began with being of no party; but Reform soon gave it one. It disclaimed all knowledge of statistics; and the rest of its politics were rather a sentiment, and a matter of training, than founded on any particular political reflection. It possessed the benefit, however, of a good deal of

ANTI-EXAMINER CHARGES REFUTED.

5

general reading. It never wanted examples out of history and biography, or a kind of adornment from the spirit of literature; and it gradually drew to its perusal many intelligent persons of both sexes, who would, perhaps, never have attended to politics under any other circumstances.

In the course of its warfare with the Tories, the Examiner was charged with Bonaparteism, with republicanism, with disaffection to Church and State, with conspiracy at the tables of Burdett, and Cobbett, and Henry Hunt. Now Sir Francis, though he was for a long time our hero, we never exchanged a word with; and Cobbett and Henry Hunt (no relation of ours) we never beheld;-never so much as saw their faces. I was never even at a public dinner; nor do I believe my brother was. We had absolutely no views whatsoever, but those of a decent competence and of the public good; and we thought, I dare affirm, a great deal more of the latter than of the former. Our competence we allowed too much to shift for itself. Zeal for the public good was a family inheritance; and this we thought ourselves bound to increase. As to myself, what I thought of, more than either, was the making of verses. I did nothing for the greater part of the week but write verses and read books. I then made a rush at my editorial duties; took a world of superfluous pains in the writing; sat up late at night, and was a very trying