[29] "Surely it is too gross to suppose that the Prince of Wales, the friend of Fox, can have been affecting habits of thinking, and indulging habits of intimacy, which he is to give up at a moment's notice for nobody knows what:--surely it cannot be, that the Prince Regent, the Whig Prince, the friend of Ireland--the friend of Fox,--the liberal, the tolerant, experienced, large-minded Heir Apparent, can retain in power the very men, against whose opinions he has repeatedly declared himself, and whose retention in power hitherto he has explicitly stated to be owing solely to a feeling of delicacy with respect to his father." (_The Examiner_, February 28, 1812.)
[30] _The Examiner_, March 12, 1812. The contention between Canon Ainger and Mr. Gosse in respect to Charles Lamb's supposed part in this libel is set forth in _The Athenaeum_ of March 23, 1889. Mr. Gosse's evidence came through Robert Browning from John Forster, who first told Browning as early as 1837 that Lamb was concerned in it.
[31] Mr. Monkhouse says that it was then politically unjustifiable. (_Life of Leigh Hunt_, p. 88.)
[32] Brougham wrote of his intended defense, "it will be a thousand times more unpleasant than the libel." For a narration of his friendship for Hunt, see _Temple Bar_, June, 1876.
[37] Monkhouse, _Life of Leigh Hunt_, p. 79.
[38] Patmore, _My Friends and Acquaintance_, III, p. 101.
[39] The _Edinburgh Review_ of May, 1823, in an article entitled _The Periodical Press_ ranked Hunt next to Cobbett in talent and _The Examiner_ as the ablest and most respectable of weekly publications, when allowance had been made for the occasional twaddle and flippancy, the mawkishness about firesides and Bonaparte, and the sickly sonnet-writing.
[40] Mazzini wrote Hunt: "Your name is known to many of my Countrymen; it would no doubt impart an additional value to the thoughts embodied in the League. [International League.] It is the name not only of a patriot, but of a high literary man and a poet. It would show at once that _natural_ questions are questions not of merely _political_ tendencies, but of feeling, eternal trust, and Godlike poetry. It would show that poets understand their active mission down here, and that they are also prophets and apostles of things to come. I was told only to-day that you had been asked to be a member of the League's Council, and feel a want to express the joy I too would feel at your assent." (_Cornhill Magazine_, LXV, p. 480 ff.)