[11] Dickens did Hunt an irreparable injury in caricaturing him as Harold Skimpole. The character bore such an unmistakable likeness to Hunt that it was recognized by every one who knew him, yet the weaknesses and vices were greatly multiplied and exaggerated. Before the appearance of _Bleak House_, Dickens wrote Hunt in a letter which accompanied the presentation copies of _Oliver Twist_ and the New American edition of the _Pickwick Papers_: "You are an old stager in works, but a young one in faith--faith in all beautiful and excellent things. If you can only find in that green heart of yours to tell me one of these days, that you have met, in wading through the accompanying trifles, with anything that felt like a vibration of the old chord you have touched so often and sounded so well, you will confer the truest gratification on your old friend, Charles Dickens." (_Littell's Living Age_, CXCIV, p. 134.)
His apology after Hunt's death was complete, but it could not destroy the lasting memory of an immortal portrait. He wrote: "a man who had the courage to take his stand against power on behalf of right--who in the midst of the sorest temptations, maintained his honesty unblemished by a single stain--who, in all public and private transactions, was the very soul of truth and honour--who never bartered his opinion or betrayed his friend--could not have been a weak man; for weakness is always treacherous and false, because it has not the power to resist." (_All The Year Round_, April 12, 1862.)
[12] Godwin, _Enquiry Concerning Political Justice_, Book VIII, Chap. I.
[13] Prof. Saintsbury has very plausibly suggested that a similar attitude in Godwin, Coleridge and Southey in respect to financial assistance was a legacy from patronage days. (_A History of Nineteenth Century Literature_, p. 33.) The same might be said of Hunt.
[14] S. C. Hall, _A Book of Memories of Great Men and Women of the Age, from Personal Acquaintance_, p. 247.
[15] His feeling on the subject is set forth clearly in a letter where he is writing of the generosity of Dr. Brocklesby to Johnson and Burke: "The extension of obligations of this latter kind is, for many obvious reasons, not to be desired. The necessity on the one side must be of as peculiar, and, so to speak, of as noble a kind as the generosity on the other; and special care would be taken by a necessity of that kind, that the generosity should be equalled by the means. But where the circumstances have occurred, it is delightful to record them." (Hunt, _Men, Women and Books_, p. 217.)